


The Veil Torn

by anselm0



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: After New York, Ensemble Cast, Multi, Slow Build, Stealth Crossover, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 18:02:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 50,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/738538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anselm0/pseuds/anselm0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Chitauri invasion, the world spins on and the Avengers are not as cohesive off the battlefield as they are on. A second invasion catches them by surprise and shakes reality down around them.</p><p>A/N: This fic willfully disregards canon from IM3 and all subsequent films. It is canon compliant with all other Marvel movies of which I am aware.</p><p>**ON HIATUS**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not speak any of the foreign languages that will come into play, so I apologize for all grammatical errors on behalf of translation apps everywhere.
> 
> Thanks for reading and for any kudos, bookmarks, and comments you might be so kind as to leave!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter first (shocking, I know,) and sometime between when I published it (giddy at having gotten anything halfway coherent finished) and when I wrote the second chapter, the plot shifted. Looking back, I find this section tonally discordant with the rest of the chapters, and I will, at some point, go back and rewrite it. The content will be largely the same, but it will hopefully be more cohesive with the rest of the work. In the meantime, chapters will be added as soon as they're finished (which is unfortunately not a phenomenon easily predicted), and I appreciate any and all comments and kudos you lovelies care to leave.
> 
> UPDATE: This is so much better. Seriously, if you came to this after the rewrite, be so grateful because this is good and the other one was crap. The second chapter also got a minor edit to better reflect the character profiles developed in later chapters, but is still largely the same. This is...as improved on the original as much as British television is better than American television.

‘The Avengers’ – it was funny, really, the idea that they were a team. Sure, they had worked together, but only because that was the only option. The levels of mutual respect had improved, but nobody was up for a permanent thing.

They went their separate ways.

XXX

Off the record, Tony let Bruce take a private jet anywhere he wanted. He kept his promise not to peek, but it didn’t matter in the end. The Other Guy happened somewhere in central India before disappearing into the Himalayas. The GPS fixes on the Starkphone Tony had given him and the tiny, unhackable tracer he had planted in Bruce’s watch didn’t follow the Hulk sightings, so Bruce had either given them away or had to leave them behind.

XXX

After four different psychological evaluations that judged him more or less fit for duty, Clint still spent most of his time in his cramped quarters. He would leave, but he was a little afraid that they wouldn’t take him back if he wasn’t there the moment they decided he might be useful again. Plus, it would have been far better than he deserved to get away from the hostility and suspicion of his once- and perhaps again-coworkers.

He deserved that. If he ever earned their trust again, it would be further proof that the universe does not care for fair.

XXX

SHIELD sent her to Somalia about some curiously well-organized pirates. Her name was Tess for five weeks, her hair was straight and blonde, and it wasn’t rape if she consciously chose to not snap their necks between their second and third vertebrae. Not until after she got the name SHIELD wanted.

Natasha never lost composure over that, or any of the others she knew about; it wouldn’t gain her anything.

Three days of being Nat and sparring with Clint until he was too bruised and swollen to walk straight and then she was Black Widow for seven weeks on the trail of someone SHIELD thought had financed Ivan Vanko. The lead dried up in the form of an explosion in Jakarta that got reported in the local papers as a construction accident and not at all internationally.

When she came back, her things had been moved along with Clint to Stark Tower. Rogers called her Widow because he didn’t know if addressing her as ‘Miss’ would be offensive, and she let him. Then he followed Stark’s lead of calling her Agent Romanov, which was fine, too. She had never been picky about the names other people chose to hang on her. It didn’t mean much, in the end.

But she knew that Clint was demonstrating their intimacy when he called her Tash instead of Nat.

XXX

One time, when he was bored and depressed, Steve tried to make himself sick by overeating. The chips made his tongue and gums feel funny after the first bag and the boxed macaroni with powdered cheese always came out either too dry or too wet because he couldn’t find a measuring cup for the milk. It took two hours of rapid consumption and then he had to push hard on his swollen stomach, but at least a third of it came back up. That was one thing the serum couldn’t fix.

He was pretty sure JARVIS had told somebody because Fury sent him an email four hours later telling him that they had tracked down the last living Commando less than an hour away from the city.

XXX

It was odd to have people around. They were technically several stories down, but they were a lot closer on a regular basis than people usually were to Tony. Probably the last time he had slept in such close proximity to so many people was college. It wasn’t bad, he supposed, for all that they had essentially come there on orders, but he did have an irrational fear that they would get bored.

That was how he ended up in the gym with the assassin twins and Steve Rogers, watching Steve in the boxing ring with a souped up sparring bot designed to take the kind of hits his neighbors could dish out.

He was observing Steve’s form and considering how to fabricate a lighter Kevlar skin that would make Sugar Ray’s movements quicker so he could keep up with better-than-human reaction times when Tony suddenly realized that he wanted to run his fingers through Steve’s sweat-dampened hair, press his open mouth to the pulse point in Steve’s throat, tighten his legs around Steve’s waist until hipbones were cutting into his thighs. Tony lost himself in a heady fantasy of his wrists pinned to the bed over his head, tasting the salt on Steve’s upper lip, hearing Steve gasp and moan as he raised his hips to grind their crotches together.

He imagined that Steve’s erection was not any longer than his own, but much thicker.

It took him longer than he liked to claw his way back to reality. Steve was still shirtless, which was not helpful.

Natasha was watching him, he could sense it, but Tony refused to acknowledge her gaze and legitimize what she saw on his face. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

Steve, of course, was oblivious; Tony’s tech never (hardly ever) disappointed. When he leapt back to avoid an uppercut that would shatter a regular man’s jaw, the concentration on his face cleaved to a bright, exhilarated grin. He was young and beautiful and happy and Tony was responsible for one of those things.

Natasha wasn’t looking at Tony any longer but he knew that she was still paying attention. A quick retreat would tell her more than probably even he knew about what had just happened and – whatever Rhodey said, – Tony still had some measure of dignity left. He wasn’t sure what he could prove, but he was going to stick it out as long as he could.

It was difficult not to give into the temptation of the sculpted bare back gleaming under the gym lights and that goddamn _ass_ that jiggled with every punch. The absolute perfection of Steve’s body just made it that much more irritating that he was emphatically not vain about physical appearances. He took a swig of water and a drop of sweat fell from his hair and rolled down his back to stain the waistband of his hideous, cat-sick colored gym pants, and Tony only wanted to pull them down and discover Cap’s underwear preference.

Okay, diverting. Tony pulled out his phone and scrolled through his email without really seeing anything. Nine from Pepper, with increasing use of capitalization to get his attention, but she hadn’t gotten JARVIS to start nagging yet, so it couldn’t be that important. Projecting boredom as best he knew how – and did he – Tony turned and walked away as nonchalantly as he could. It wouldn’t fool Natasha, nothing would, but maybe she bore him enough goodwill to keep her mouth shut around the others. Especially Clint.

Hopefully. God, let it be so.

“The lab, Sir?” JARVIS prompted when he got into the elevator.

“Make it so, Number One.”

The lift moved smoothly downward.

The security feed from the gym was on Tony’s phone, because he wasn’t going to let an inconvenient epiphany keep him from perfecting his bot. The angle wasn’t nearly as good as the one he had held at the side of the ring, but damned if the resolution was as sharp as his own eyesight. Sugar Ray clipped Steve’s shoulder and he laughed silently onscreen. It was not Tony’s imagination that Steve looked around to say something to him and looked slightly put out that Tony was no longer there.

Nor was it Tony’s imagination that his diaphragm suddenly felt a little tight. He’d have to do a lung capacity test to make sure it wasn’t a problem.

The lift doors slid silently open and Tony resolutely returned the phone to his pocket. “JARVIS, run the elevators twenty—no, thirty-five percent faster. The ride’s too long.”

“If you say so, Sir, but I would remind you that the Tower lifts already run considerably faster than—”

“Thanks, Jay, you’re a peach.”

What to do now? Tony pawed disinterestedly through the detritus on his worktable, unable to remember when he had made or dissembled half of it. He could always do some tinkering with the armor, but it seemed a little silly when he hadn’t even had the chance to test out his latest upgrades. 

But then, the other option was finding out whatever corporate thing Pepper was going on about.

“Dummy, bring me my toolbox.”

Or maybe that light weave Kevlar would be interesting for a few hours. If he got it right, he could make another small fortune from government contracts. And Cap’s uniform needed help – some idiot had put him in stripes, the _horror_ – and it turned out he really needed a lot of flexibility for his various serum-enhanced acrobatics.

But now Steve and his glorious glutes were back at the front of his mind. Tony called up the prototype design for a spacefaring suit with vicious jabs of his fingers.

“Put that back, Dummy.”

The bot was indignant, purposefully and ostentatiously putting the toolkit away where it did not belong. Tony briefly considered berating Dummy, but he wouldn’t be able to muster his usual enthusiasm for the sport. Instead, he threw himself into a chair with a petulant huff. Fucking peak of physical perfection. 

“Would you like some music, Sir?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

“Any requests?”

The ceiling lights spun dizzily above Tony’s chair. “Surprise me.”

There was a wholly unnecessary beat of silence before a soft jazzy number came over the speakers. 

_I’ve got you under my skin  
I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me_

Tony couldn’t help but laugh; he never dipped into his parents’ record collection, not since he got spectacularly wasted right after their car accident, and he didn’t remember much of that except that it had ended in a lot of shattered 48s. JARVIS knew, the fucker. He knew everything. Tony really was good.

“Are you kidding me with this, JARVIS?” The words were devoid of venom, halfway to amusement. “I’ve got to dial your personality back about three or four or twenty notches.”

“I quiver with fear,” JARVIS replied drily.

_I’d tried so, not to give in  
I said to myself, this affair never will go so well_

“Exactly,” Tony sighed, slouching deeper into the chair and fingering the phone in his pocket. He would not give in to the urge to see whether Steve had bested Sugar Ray 3.4 yet. Squeezing his eyes shut, Tony fitfully tossed his head back and concentrated on the discomfort in his neck.

“You hear Frank’s words of wisdom, JARVIS?”

“Shall I change it, Sir?”

Tony didn’t reply, and Sinatra sang on.

XXX

The serum had enhanced Steve’s hearing, so even though Clint was standing less than three feet away, Natasha texted him. ‘ _Stark got wise. Five on a week._ ’

Clint read it and then glanced up at Steve. Yep, that’d do it. ‘ _Finally. Control issues, ten on five days._ ’

They hadn’t bet on coworkers in a while. It hadn’t been much fun when Coulson always won; that wasn’t an issue now.

But Clint hadn’t hesitated to take her up on the wager. Maybe a trite contest would be just what they needed. And no way was she going to let him win.

XXX

Age was the problem, he decided after enough spinning had let the explanation precipitate against the inside of his skull. 

Tony was not being shy; nobody could ever call him a prude with a straight face. It wasn’t as though he didn’t notice and respond to manly virtues on a regular basis. He happened to enjoy the easy power that usually accompanied a female partner, but it wasn’t the only flavor he favored and he would have to be dead or asexual to not understand in a highly visceral manner that Steve was edible. It was in that body and also in that commanding tone that said he expected people to jump to, and his perfectly parted blond hair that Tony wanted to muss as thoroughly as possible.

Well, his issues with authority were hardly secret.

No, the reasons why Tony wanted Steve were perfectly obvious and completely predictable. Age was the only reason he could not act here like he had done with the professor and TA of his microelectrics class senior year, his first through third military contracts liaisons (the fourth had been Rhodey, and screw the freaking JCS for finding a way to end his fun), and Pepper. 

Not that Tony was old, or even too much older. In fact, he was physically more comfortable and sure of himself now than ever before. Maybe his sex drive was not quite as explosive as it had been when he was a young man, but that wasn’t exactly a bad thing. Nobody brought it up for fear of provoking a fit of contrariness, but both Stark Industries’ legal and human resources departments had been quietly downsized since his palladium scare and the near end of his sexual harassment suits, which had made up a good third of their respective workloads.

He had no inclination to continue pursuing a record number of out of court settlements, but Tony still enjoyed sex. He was more than confident in his ability to keep up with a partner Steve’s age, the serum notwithstanding. (And Tony would love nothing more than to be on the receiving end of that kind of stamina. Steve’s refractory period must be _insane_.)

Nor was it out of sensitivity for Steve’s turn of the century social politics – nobody had or could ever accuse Tony Stark of being that thoughtful. Flipping fucking _Captain America_ would be an excellent use of his genius and innovation as far as Tony was concerned.

Though it probably wouldn’t be that hard. Steve wasn’t homophobic, and Tony knew that because he was an asshole and brought it up within a day of Steve’s arrival at the Tower. It had been perhaps into their fourth hour of being in conversation without the shared objective of holding back an alien incursion. Unsurprisingly, Steve was the most progressive and politically tactful man born in 1921. Captain America’s perfection could never be limited to the mundane realms of the physical, and screw Howard for being right about that.

(Tony also had his suspicions about Steve’s ‘friendship’ with Bucky Barnes, but he’d save that for a day when he was wearing the suit or feeling particularly reckless.)

And it was not that Tony was afraid of public backlash. Having sex with Captain America was the sort of personal attribute you put on your resume or hired out a billboard to advertise. Not that Tony had a resume, but the billboard he could definitely swing – every billboard on the island of Manhattan.

No, like all of Tony’s real problems, it came back to Howard.

Steve had known Tony’s father, and known him when Howard was younger than Tony was now. It wouldn’t matter that Steve was technically geriatric and technically the contemporary of Tony’s parents, except that Steve missed his own time and Howard had been his friend. For years after Steve’s disappearance, Tony’s father had searched for him. Even when there was no hope of finding anything but a long frozen corpse, Howard had kept scouring the north Atlantic, kept inventing new technologies specifically to continue looking. 

This was a level of sentimentality Tony had never received, but he had come to terms with the fact that Howard had loved Steve more than he ever did his own son. The problem was the fear lodged irretrievably deep inside Tony’s brain that Steve would always love Howard better, too. Because Steve was old enough to have known Howard Stark when he was as charismatic, attractive, and brilliant as Tony was, but had never had the opportunity to discover the flaws that Howard had been particularly good at hiding. Tony’s failures and defects of character were splashed across headlines, and he (tried not to) didn’t care who read them.

Yeah, attraction and affection were fickle, subjective things, but Tony had been contending with Howard’s legacy and reputation his whole life, and they had loathed each other from the time Tony realized he was an unwelcome accident to the day Howard died. The last conversation they had had was a terse phone call during which Howard threatened to disown him if Tony didn’t dry out and Tony dared him to and called Howard a hypocrite, and his mother sighed in the background because this was the same conversation they had been having for the past three years and she could only be relieved that they weren’t doing it in person again because that had been a priceless Qing vase her husband had hurled at the wall. 

It was bad enough that the bastard had been right all this time, and Tony just couldn’t keep up the envious hatred of Cap he’d nursed for more than thirty years, because Steve was naïve and disgustingly idealistic but he was so fucking honest about both that it was somehow endearing. There would be nothing to save him if Steve _settled_ for him and always wished for Howard, instead.

Just imagining it made him want to smash holes through the walls, Hulk-style, and drink until he passed out without much thought of waking back up.


	2. Chapter 2

The problem with being superheroes – and wasn’t that a laughable concept – was that the public knew about them. A lifetime of being spy and assassin did not endear Natasha to the idea of being a celebrity, but she was, although thankfully to a much smaller degree than any of her comrades. The rankings would put Rogers and Stark as near as makes no difference even at the top, Thor slightly ahead of Hulk because he had a conventional skin tone and beards were ‘in,’ Hawkeye well above baseline because archery was enjoying a huge spike in popularity and his arms were still in the running against those of full physical excellence and a demigod, and herself at the bottom, because feminist fervor still came in second behind lust and anyway, she was by far the least flashy of the group.

She would prefer that she didn’t garner any more public attention than Alien Invader Extra #211.

Luckily, she was still most useful as a spy and assassin, and Rogers and Stark took the brunt of the spotlight simply because they had the best name recognition and, being off-planet, Thor was as unavailable to stalk as it was possible to be. Thus, she was waiting for SHIELD’s next summons from the Tower while waiting for Steve’s appearance on _The Colbert Report_ to start.

“Are you watching Steve’s interview?”

Natasha didn’t look around at Tony to respond. “I’m still on Australian time.”

He snorted and plopped down on the other arm of the sofa. “Like jet lag would dare affect you.”

Feeling rather charitable to him at the moment, she didn’t call out his terrible act at not being there to watch it, too. There was probably nothing that he could have said, however, that would have kept her from texting Clint, “ _Tony’s watching_.”

The first segment was just going to commercial when Clint responded: “ _Eta 2_.” No trash talk, which had always been a defining characteristic of his strategy in the past.

Deliberately not thinking too much about why, Natasha immediately replied, “ _If you spook him, I’ll break you._ ”

“ _Same side nat_ ”

XXX

“Welcome back to the _Report_! My guest tonight officially died in 1944; I’ll ask him whether you can get takeout in Hell. Please welcome Captain Steve Rogers!”

Stephen Colbert leapt energetically to his feet and bounded over to the interview table as the crowd cheered him on with equal fervor. The studio was filled with an almost childish exuberance, and the way Colbert lapped up the adoration of his audience reminded Steve of Tony. He was confident that Tony Stark was as much a fictional character as was Stephen Colbert, and he wished he knew the actor playing the role as well as he did from the brief greetings backstage with his host.

Steve stood up to shake Colbert’s hand and made sure they settled into their chairs at the same time.

“Please, sit down, sit down! How are you, Captain? How’s the twenty-first century treating you?”

That was always the first question. It was a bit tiresome, but he did have a ready answer.

“It’s a little overwhelming, but I’m adjusting. I have to. It’s amazing.”

“Yeah, you can put pizza toppings inside a bread pocket and cook it from frozen in two minutes. That’s what you fought for in World War II, wasn’t it?”

“Not exactly, sir,” Steve disagreed with a smile. The portrait hanging over the fire had been changed for the occasion; instead of posing with his book as usual, Colbert was gazing up determinedly and pulling his tie and shirt panels to opposite sides to reveal the white star on the Captain America costume underneath his suit.

“Yeah, there was freedom from dictatorship and preventing genocide, but really, it was about the Hot Pockets. Hot Pockets and thirty-two ounce sodas and P.F. Chang’s on every street corner.”

 _Keep it light and charming_ , the SHIELD PR person had told him, clearly prepared to gut him with her bare hands if he got out his soapbox. _Smile and blush and say cute grandpa things and don’t take a position on anything outside of your own personal life as it exists in the public record_.

He could do that. “I never actually had Chinese food before.”

“Really. Wow.” Colbert’s eyes widened comically, and Steve thought there might be some actual surprise under the dramatic affectation.

“I didn’t eat in restaurants much at all. It was too expensive for most people and street vendors don’t count, do they? And Chinese food wasn’t a common thing in the Forties. I ate a lot of potatoes and cheese sandwiches when I was growing up.”

“That…sounds awful,” Colbert offered baldly. He was like a very understated Tony, and that at least felt like a known quantity, which was one of the reasons Steve had chosen this program over others. It was a little easier to ignore the staring black eyes of the cameras that way.

Steve shrugged slightly. “We didn’t know any better.”

“Well, I’m sure your colon is missing the good old days.” He shuffled his blue prompt cards until the crowd’s tittering died down. “You’re the leader of the Avengers, isn’t that correct? You’re a superhero.”

He _hated_ that word. “I wouldn’t put it that way—”

But Colbert spoke over his protestations. “There was that, that thing last summer, with the crazy alien whales in the sky. I was on vacation in the Caribbean, but I heard about it. That was you guys! You and Iron Man and…” he waved a careless hand, “those other people, whatever their names are. You all stopped an honest to God alien invasion. That’s pretty impressive. I mean—”

He broke off to allow the crowd to cheer uproariously. Steve smiled modestly and inclined his head politely toward their writhing silhouette, obscured by the glare of the stage lights. When they quieted, Colbert continued, “I mean, I have two Emmys and two Peabody awards, but what you did was good, too.”

Steve chuckled along with the crowd on that one. To exhibit both casualness and intimacy, he leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table, like the most friendly of Colbert’s guests did. “Well, I had a lot of help. At the end of the day, I’m just a guy with a big metal discus. I rely a lot on my teammates.” 

Colbert’s brows pinched together in confusion. “So, they’re not your underlings?”

“Not at all, sir, no.”

“That’s a shame, I have to tell you. I have underlings and it’s great. But I’ve got to say, it’s kind of worrying that you’re all wandering around without a leader. This isn’t a Commie thing where you’re all equals, is it? Weren’t you the leader of your unit in World War II? The, what was it?”

“The Howling Commandos, that was our nickname.”

“Howling Commandos! Yes, that’s right, I knew that. But you led them.”

“Sort of,” Steve hedged. “I put the team together and the newspapers called me the leader, but every mission was a joint effort, just like the Avengers are. I don’t work with experts in whatever field to ignore their opinions and act like I know better than they do when I don’t. Especially now, when my cultural background is so far removed from everybody else’s. We work together, covering each other’s weak spots. People seem to think just because there’s a rank in my call sign that I’m the commanding officer.”

“Yes, you’re Captain America – _the_ Captain America, you know. Well, obviously you—there were some concerns early on that you were a successor to the, the title. Because, I mean, you’re—” He waves a hand towards Steve’s broad shoulders and unlined face, allowing a moment for several confident women in the audience to make their appreciation heard. “Is that the ice or the serum?”

“I really don’t know, sir, to be honest.” Steve smiled guilelessly at the incredulous look at Colbert’s face. “I’m not a scientist or a doctor.” Though he knew quite a few, and they had their theories. “All I know is, I remember the war. That was definitely me.”

“What stands out to you about the war? What’s your memory of that? It was a just a few months ago for you.”

That changed the atmosphere, but the topic deserved a more somber, serious treatment.

Steve answered honestly. “I remember my friends, the Commados. It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that I closed my eyes seventy years ago and when I opened them, I was still the same but everybody else had lived their whole lives.”

He paused, remembering seeing Jim Morita wrapped in a blanket in a rocking chair in a retirement home in New Jersey. Martha, Jim’s daughter, who was in her fifties, had quietly excused herself so they could catch up in private. They had both refused to acknowledge crying during their meeting, surreptitiously scrubbing the tears from their cheeks and pretending not to notice the other doing the same. Jim’s hair had gone white and wispy over his liver-spotted scalp and his skin was papery when Steve held his trembling hand. It had been an agonizing relief to find Jim was still the snarky spitfire from Fresno underneath his frail exterior.

They had reminisced over absent friends, and it was a wake to make up for all the funerals Steve had missed. Dum Dum had stayed in the military as a firearms instructor, and married three times without children; he died in 1991 of lung cancer.

Gabe Jones went back to school and became a historian activist during the civil rights movement. Somewhat late in life, he had married a French woman and adopted her daughters, Sabrina and Ariadne; Gabe died of heart disease in 2000.

Jacques Dernier went back to the French resistance when the unit broke up. He was declared killed in action several weeks later, though his body was never recovered.

James Montgomery Falsworth took a minor position in the British government and spent the whole of his life serving Queen and country; he left behind a wife and son when he died in 1987. His funeral had been the last time Jim had left the United States.

(Jim didn’t know what had happened to Peggy, and Steve hadn’t let SHIELD tell him. It was better to imagine something happy and good for her than take a chance on reality.)

And Jim Morita had three children of his own, five grandchildren, and one two-month old great-grandson. Steve had felt oddly detached when presented with photographs of the Morita family, even as he agreed Jim’s late wife Sai had been lovely, and his granddaughter Amanda had inherited her shy smile. He had felt hollow, wishing that he had been there to share his friends’ lives and honor their deaths, yet feeling nothing for the people frozen on the paper in hands. He had selfishly wished that his teammates all had frozen in time, too, if Steve had to be, so that he would not feel so alone. 

Somehow, having their long lives unspooled before him, separate and alien, was even worse than the prospect of them having died in battle like Dernier did less than a month after Steve’s disappearance. The long-missing corpse of the man Steve had hardly ever directly spoken to seemed more coherent with his memories than the little old man in the rocker. Morita was not the same man he had been, after all.

Or rather, Steve was the same man he had been more than half a century ago, right down to the calluses on his heels from boots that were supposed to have stretched out but hadn’t, and everyone else had drifted onward like people were supposed to do.

Steve realized he had been silent for too long, and forced a disarming apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. It still gets me, that they’re almost all gone.”

“That’s understandable, Captain.”

“Please, call me Steve.”

“Okay, you can still call me sir.”

Relieved that they were back to light joking, Steve laughed. “I was going to anyway, sir.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page. So, you’re working with a new team now, the Avengers. Tell me what—can you talk about your teammates, or would you have to kill me?”

“I’d prefer not to kill anyone, but yes, I can talk about them. Iron Man, you already know about.”

The crowd made a great deal of noise at the name, punctuated by not a few of what sounded like amorous screams.

“Yes, Tony Stark, the name—the name does sound familiar.” Colbert smiled wryly. “He was on the program a few years ago, before he was Iron Man.”

“I bet he was awful,” Steve guessed, grinning, when it appeared that Colbert was scrabbling for television-appropriate words to describe the experience. Tony wouldn’t mind. “He’s a difficult man to get used to.”

“He said it, not me! Iron Man,” Colbert turned directly to the camera in supplication. “Don’t blow up my car! Also, come back on the show and we’ll talk smack about _this guy_ ,” he finished in a stage whisper behind one hand, jabbing a terribly hidden finger at Steve.

Steve chuckled good-naturedly while Colbert pretended to schmooze. “So, Captain. You have a hard time getting along with Tony Stark?”

“Not anymore.” The words were out of his mouth before Steve recognized they were true. Anyway, on the off-chance that Tony saw this, he didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. “He was the first person to not really care that I’m—Tony just expected me to catch up with the times, and that was pretty helpful. Everybody else wanted to ease me into it but he doesn’t do anything cautiously and the sink or swim mentality was…” Steve paused, uncertain how to put it. “Refreshing. It helped me think of now as now instead of the future, you know? We work together fine now.”

They probably would, if they did work together at all.

“What about the other members of the Avengers? The big green guy, the Hulk – he isn’t that big and green all the time, is he? People would notice that, even in New York.” Everyone laughed along with the friendly dig at the city.

“No, he’s not.” Rather pointedly, Steve left it at that, and was grateful that Colbert remembered the list of taboo topics the PR agent had listed and moved on.

“And Thor’s the guy with the hammer. Is he really—be straight with me. Is he really a god?”

Steve ignored the enthusiastic whoops from the women in the audience. “I don’t think so, sir.” Colbert’s eyebrows rose in surprise – that could be construed as contradictory to the statements SHIELD had put out – but Steve wasn’t going to waffle on this issue, even if Kirsty took it out of him with her manicured black nails afterward. “Thor is another alien, but obviously much friendlier than the Chitauri, the ones that tried to invade us. His family was worshipped as gods a long time ago, but he’s not the real God.”

“It’s nice to have someone in the public eye brave enough to be a Christian these days,” Colbert quipped with a straight face. “And you’re—are you Catholic?”

“I’m Irish, sir,” Steve replied drily. “Of course I’m Catholic.”

“Well, I am America’s foremost famous Catholic.” Colbert looked at Steve in mock sternness over his glasses. “You’re not going to try to crowd my turf, are you? You may be a super-soldier, but I’ve got the faith-muscle to play quarterback for Jesus, you know what I’m saying?”

Luckily, Steve was not required to respond with anything more coherent than a chuckle and a shake of his head, because Colbert barely allowed the audience to laugh again before reverting back to the original topic.

“Okay, we’ve got Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor—who else is on the Avengers? Or is it _in_ the Avengers?”

“Uh, I’ve heard it both ways, I guess. Black Widow and Hawkeye are they other two. Widow is trained in…” She had once rattled off the list of all her areas of expertise in her disinterested, inflectionless manner of speaking, but there were yellow lights flashing over the cameras to say they were running out of time. He didn’t even know what half of the things she mentioned were, to be honest, and he wasn’t certain she wasn’t above slipping in something that would be embarrassing for him to say on national television. 

“Everything, really, and she does it all frighteningly well. She’s an incredible combat instructor, the best fighter I’ve ever seen. Hawkeye has similar training, but he’s mainly a sniper. I’ve never met a better shot.”

Steve felt a twinge of guilt when he said that, saw Bucky raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms in his mind’s eye. But it’s true, Steve mentally protested to this apparition, knowing Bucky would hold it against him all the same.

“And that’s—that’s all of us,” he finished – somewhat lamely, he thought, but Colbert didn’t seem to hold it against him. For at least the third time since he had arrived at the studio, Steve was thankful that the interview process was much less painful than it could have been. 

Eyes trained past Steve to the blinking lights, Colbert couldn’t pursue the subject any further at the moment. “Ah, we’ve got to take a little commercial break, but stay with us. When we come back, more with Captain Rogers.”

XXX

‘Welcome back, everybody! We’re with Captain Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, the not-leader of the Avengers. Now, Steve,’ Colbert pushed his glasses up his nose, ‘we were talking about your teammates…but I don’t really want to talk about them anymore.’

On screen, Steve let out a huff of suppressed laughter and quickly cleared his throat to disguise it. Natasha watched Tony carefully out of the corner of her eye for a reaction, but his fingers did not slow their incessant tapping across the screen of his tablet.

“Oh, come on!” Clint protested indignantly. His approach was patently different from hers; completely ignoring her directive to not put too much pressure on Stark, Clint had rushed in, still sweaty from the gym, loudly demanded to know what he had missed, and plopped down immediately adjacent to Tony. Only after two minutes of squabbling and insults had Clint petulantly moved a little farther down the empty expanse of the massive couch.

“Nobody cares about us,” he griped. “Boo!”

“Damn straight.” Half smug and half absent-minded, Tony still didn’t look away from whatever was on his personal screen. “And I would have thought you would prefer that, being super-secret assassin spies.”

“He wasn’t going to give away my identity. And even if he did, it’s not like I technically exist anymore.” Clint slouched moodily in his seat, kicking scuffed boot up onto the table. Given where it was, Natasha did not doubt that particular table was more expensive than anything she or Clint had ever personally owned, even including Clint’s recurve bow custom manufactured from an ultra-light titanium alloy to suit his ambidextrous style. Stark noticed, but he didn’t comment.

“You’re just upset that nobody screamed for you.”

Natasha easily deflected the pillow Clint whipped at her, and ignored his stiff-fingered salute.

‘…leave the city often,” Steve was saying in conclusion to a short description of his solo cross-country bike ride with a shrug. “But I draw. Before the War, art was my best shot at a career, and I still like to sketch.’

‘Maybe we can talk about that later, but I have to ask the most important question of all. Do you have a girlfriend?’

There was the briefest and faintest of stutters in the rhythm of Tony’s fingers.

Easily, instantly, Steve responded playfully, ‘No. Why, are you coming on to me?’

‘Could I be?’ Colbert fired back just as quickly. He started to take it back, but Steve just chuckled.

‘I heard you were married; so, no.’

At least a dozen women and a couple of men in the crowd crowed delightedly amid the general uproar this remark generated. Tony finally looked up to a brief frame of Stephen Colbert’s slightly stunned face just before the camera cut back to Steve, one hand splayed on the table as he looked up through his eyelashes at Colbert with lopsided grin. His was absolutely an absolutely perfect public demeanor – Tumblr was probably already in paroxysms of ecstasy by now.

“Did Steve just make a gay double entendre?” Clint demanded of nobody in particular with all the tact of a fourteen year old. Judging the answer obvious, Natasha kept silent; Tony just tucked his chin down again and resumed tapping away.

‘Well, yes, I am, but—no, I—I think,’ Colbert stuttered to a stop and waited until the audience had gotten ahold of itself before continuing, ‘I think my wife would understand. It would be very patriotic!’

He and Steve laughed as their spectators shrieked and clapped their approval. Other than the impressive flush over his cheeks that just enhanced the character he was playing, Steve appeared completely unfazed by the flirting. Lit from beneath by his tablet, Stark’s face was carefully impassive like it never was when he truly was engrossed in his work.

‘I’m sorry, where were we?’ Nearly as red as Steve, Colbert tugged at his tie. ‘It’s a little hot in here. I’ve lost track of—’

‘No girlfriend, and I won’t date you.’

‘Oh, right, right! Just give me a moment to get over my crushing disappointment. No, don’t mind me!’ He waved Steve off. ‘It’s not every day you get shot down by a national icon, but I’ll get over it, I’ll get over it!’

‘I’m no icon,’ Steve protested in earnest. ‘You’re more of an icon now than I am. It’s a good day for me; I got—what is it? Hit on? I got hit on by you.’

‘Captain America is letting me down easy. Thank God we’re getting this on film. Jimmy, I want a copy of this. I want to be _buried_ with a copy of this. Where did—where was I going? Serious things! I was going to talk about serious things with a war hero!’

‘No, no, this is better,’ Steve assured him. ‘You joke with everybody. That’s one of the reasons I like this show.’

‘You’re a _fan_?’ Colbert was nearly shouting, tightly gripping the edge of the table either as leverage or to anchor himself from leaning too far across the table.

Steve got so far as to say ‘Of course—’ before Colbert leapt up to raise his arms triumphantly before the howling audience, and then half covered his face in embarrassment even as he laughed behind his hand. Colbert took two bows before sitting back down. By the time only a few people were still voicing their giddy congratulations, he had composed himself.

The first and likely only sober question of the whole affair was about the Avengers’ culpability for the massive damages resultant of the Chitauri attack. She was unsurprised when Steve acquitted himself of the query admirably, commending all the first responders and giving personal thanks for the national support that Manhattan had gotten. No sane person watching could think he was flippant about the destruction, and he was so likeable that they and by extension SHIELD would probably avoid a deluge of civil suits, as well. Of them all, Steve was without doubt the most valuable to Fury.

‘Yeah, I saw you. I saw pictures of you, in the uniform, helping with the cleanup afterwards. You had a fu—’ Colbert cut off the expletive, ‘A broom! A _broom_! Is that part of your job description?’

‘I think so, yes. It’s every American’s duty to do whatever they can when some of us are hurting.’ The sincere virtuousness was just nauseating; the majority of the public would eat it up with a spoon.

‘Why didn’t you wear the uniform tonight? Or do you wear it under your clothes all the time, like Superman?’

‘No, I don’t do that. I thought I was going to have to wear it, actually, but I’m glad I could wear this instead.’ His dress uniform was almost more impressive with its weighty mass of service bars and combat medals, which she knew didn’t encompass even half of his awards and decorations. It was the new blue version – he had slept through the long period of green class ‘A’s – and the part he cared about most was the brassard with the special badge for the Howling Commandos. 

‘I’d feel silly sitting here with you in a suit and me in skintight blue leather.’

Clint exhaled noisily in annoyance at the thoroughly predictable response to this innocently delivered statement. “Honestly, how did he not see that coming?”

“He did see in coming.” Any idiot could have seen that coming, and Steve was far from an idiot. “It’s smart of him, using his sex appeal. A horny audience isn’t going to badmouth him, and Fury told him to get the public on our side.”

Tony looked up again, speculating on the screen’s high definition rendering of Steve’s sincerity, like he couldn’t quite believe her assessment. For some reason, he continued to think of Steve as the guileless cardboard cutout of American goodness propped up against fascism and Communism alike that he had been for five decades.

The interview wound down quickly after that. Colbert thanked Steve for his service and they shook hands twice across the table. Without being prompted, JARVIS muted the commercials.

“Where is Cap?” Clint looked around as though Steve might suddenly materialize out of thin air. “He wasn’t in the gym when I left.”

“Captain Rogers did not return to the Tower this evening,” JARVIS intoned smoothly.

“Why not? Where’d he go?” 

“He’s in New Jersey,” Tony announced straightaway.

“Are you tracking his phone?”

Tony shot him a look that eloquently called Clint an idiot for even asking.

“He might have ditched it,” Clint argued defensively. “Why would he go to New Jersey? Brooklyn, sure, but Jersey?”

“One of the Commandos is in a retirement home in Paramus,” Natasha told them as she deftly snatched the tablet away from Tony.

“You have no concept of personal boundaries, do you, Romanov? I was doing something important. Well, something that might be important. In the future. Why are you worried about Steve? He survived being frozen solid for the better part of a century, aliens, and Nazis; I don’t think Jersey’s going to be the thing that gets him.” Tony reconsidered. “At least not quickly. It might suck the life out of him over time, but he’s only going for a visit.”

“But they could corrupt him. He’d be ruined with one of those fake tans and their glassy eyes.”

“Your brand of trash is still trash, Cornhusker. And don’t you know?” He sneered and pressed his thumb hard into his chest against the rim of the arc reactor. “Captain America is incorruptible.”

He and Clint continued sniping at each other, but Natasha tuned them out. JARVIS helpfully brought up the map with a shining red pinprick designating Steve’s location on the Starkpad. No doubt he was also hiding whatever Tony had been doing from her, she mused, admiring his efficacy. The tracker was moving extremely slowly along the road; she estimated his speed could be no more than four miles per hour. If Steve still had his phone, he must be walking to Paramus.

It was not an especially long way away, but unusual behavior all the same. Natasha would give him until noon to check in before she would contact him.

“Oh, thank you, how magnanimous,” Tony muttered as he caught the tablet she dropped into his lap. “I can’t believe I thought you were a good assistant!” he called after her retreating back.

“Why did you come watch the _Report_ and spend the whole show on your tablet?” Natasha was beginning to think Clint’s blatant artlessness was his genius; Stark either had to respond or change the subject, and anything he did would be highly informative. It wouldn’t do to win on a lead of Clint’s finding, though, so she didn’t linger and barely heard Tony’s response as the elevator doors closed.

“Meteoroid exploded over Russia. Look—”

XXX

Two figures dropped to the ground in a sparse copse of leafless trees as a cosmic crash echoed across the frozen landscape. They did not move for several long minutes, until the slash of fire in the sky had faded to a smudge of smoky haze.

The woman came to first with a gasp that was closely followed by choking on leaf fragments she had inhales. She pressed her mouth tightly into the crook of her elbow to muffle the sound and carefully lifted herself up. Blood was smeared across her cheek from where it had leaked from her nose.

Shivering, she pulled a pair of gloves out of her pocket and pulled them over trembling fingers. Stumbling in a pair of galoshes that came up to her knees over a pair of thick green cargo pants and casting a wary eye around the empty clearing, the woman nudged the still prone man.

“ _Dongsaeng_?” She crouched and rolled him onto his back. “ _Dongsaeng_! Wake up!” she ordered in a soft voice. Opening his mouth with a finger to his chin and hovering closely over him, she sighed with relief at the feel of his breath warming her cheek. “ _Geuneun sal-a iss-eoyo_ ,” she murmured to herself as she looked around.

Snorting a bit on the sharp inhale, the man opened his eyes, instinctively twitching his arms up as he awoke. A shudder ran through his body and he swore brokenly, squeezed his eyes shut again, grabbed his head, and rolled over onto his side. The woman laughed gaily as he tried to curl around her knees.

Resting a hand on his shoulder, she queried in a whisper, “Are you good to move?”

“No!” he moaned, tucking his fingers into the upturn of his knit cap.

“Your gloves,” she reminded, and then pulled them out of his pockets when he fumbled.

“What’s it look like?” His voice was low, eyes still closed but face lifted and turned toward her. 

She blew out a cloud of frosted breath and smiled at the sky. “Like far, far away.” 

Caressing his cheek, she coaxed him to open his eyes; they were flooded with broken blood vessels. The frozen streak of blood on her own cheek stretched and cracked when she beamed down at him. 

“It worked.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that the twenty-fourth of February is actually a Sunday, so the Colbert Report would obviously not air that night, but this is technically an AU, so I'm going to explain it away that way.
> 
> This chapter turned out to be a nice little segue into the start of the actual plot, but it began with a whimsical urge to write for Stephen Colbert, who is a national treasure. Not to mention, Colbert has a replica of Captain America's shield on his wall, so it was especially tempting to imagine how he would handle an interview with the real thing. If you haven't seen the _Report_ , I strongly encourage doing so.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been more than three weeks and Clint knew down to the soles of his boots that both he and Natasha had been wrong. Practically speaking, nothing had changed; that was not right. The new wager was on who first could pinpoint the source of the discrepancy between prediction and reality. Unspoken, the next would be who could tip the balance.

The key to getting the truth, as any spy knows, is stealth.

“Why’d Pepper dump you?”

Hands lifting the mug of coffee stilled, Tony turned slowly toward Clint, balanced on the balls of his feet on the countertop. Clint didn’t bother checking for the tiny shifts in Tony’s hands or shoulders or microexpressions in the first milliseconds after the question. Natasha believed those were the most honest forms of communication, and she was not the best intelligence agent in the world for nothing. 

Mining those sorts of clues was not the sort of thing Clint did, though. Clint Barton believed the truth was in the air between two people. His gut had not yet led him wrong. 

“What was it? You didn’t cheat on her,” Clint surmised confidently, “and she wouldn’t have left you without telling you what went wrong. Then what?” 

Tony blinked twice slowly. In reply, Clint blinked twice in quick succession and kept his gaze fixed plainly on Tony’s face as he traced a fingertip around the rim of a wineglass hanging next to his head. It wasn’t particularly comfortable to be bent in half beneath a glasses rack, nor particularly comforting to have his vision warped by the crystal suspended in front of his face, but Clint was nothing if not appreciative of the value of an impressive visual.

Unfortunately, but interestingly, Tony Stark did not seem much one to be susceptible to startle by men concealing themselves in his glassware and pouncing on him first thing in the morning. Without a word to answer to deflect the inquiry, Tony turned emphatically on his heel and left. Admittedly, Clint would have been disappointed, and no doubt Natasha would already have wound Tony around her little finger, if it was that easy.

So much for ambush, but Clint was ready for the long haul.

Clint did not have to look at his phone to know that the buzz in his pocket was a text criticizing his technique. 

XXX

“Still can’t get drunk, huh?” 

Steve started and quickly twisted his mouth into a facsimile of a smile. “Why would you say that?” 

“Come on, Captain. Young men don’t look to spend their days at the bedsides of the dying.” 

For a brief moment, Steve considered pointing out that nobody was in a bed, but that would hardly impress Jim. Then he considered doing so anyway, because it would satisfy his implacable desire for Jim to roll his eyes like Steve was the most impressive idiot he had ever encountered and say so in as many words. And, for a second, Steve would be able to pretend that they were still young men together. 

Instead, he didn’t say anything. Watched his own hands, strong and smooth, suspended over the carpet, flexing as though under their own volition. Pretended he didn’t see Jim’s hands, gnarled with arthritis, twitch on the arms of the chair next to him. Jim’s shrewd scrutiny was like the tickle of freshly shorn hair on the back of his neck. 

He could hear a clock ticking somewhere, a half second out of sync with the grandfather clock in the room with them.

Jim sighed, in the way that only old men can, and that was unacceptable. 

“Tony—” Steve forced himself to straighten and face Jim. He could run twenty miles before his lungs began to tighten, but this was like torture. “Tony says I just haven’t applied myself enough. Trying to get drunk, I mean.”

“I’d offer to match you, or at least be your designated driver, but…” Jim trailed off with a shrug. It didn’t bear saying. 

The clocks ticked twenty-three times and Steve willed himself to not cower under Jim’s steady assessment. 

“I wasn’t kidding, Steve,” Jim finally said. “I’m dying.” He smiled, and it was kind. “You’re running out of time before you won’t have any choice but to be _here_. It ain’t 1944 anymore, kid.” His lips trembled and his eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“I know,” Steve whispered, quiet and broken. “That’s why I came.” Jim would understand. He had to understand. Didn’t he? “I did a—” Steve choked on a slightly hysterical giggle. “Last night, I got interviewed, for television. _The Colbert Report_?” Jim shook his head in unfamiliarity. 

“Doesn’t matter. They didn’t make me wear the suit, thank God.” Steve ran a hand through his hair, and was disappointed that he wasn’t shaking. He felt like he should be shaking. “It went alright, I guess. I said some stupid things.” Steve felt rather than saw Jim’s skeptical expression. “Things that are probably ruining the Captain America brand.” This last phrase came out scathing. 

“If you don’t want to do that anymore, quit.” 

“Is that what people do now?”

“That’s what people do always,” Jim corrected. Steve didn’t tell Jim that he hadn’t felt like a person for a while. 

“When it was over, I didn’t feel like going…” He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘home.’ Not yet. It wouldn’t be…respectful. “So, I just started walking. I went around Manhattan.” Jim gaped, and Steve omitted the full truth; he had traipsed the island twice. “I wanted to get out, but the only place I could think of was here. I followed the signs to Paramus. I walked the whole damn night but when I got here, I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t fatigued, I… I thought about just following the road until I couldn’t walk anymore.” 

The wooden core of the armrest of his chair protested under Steve’s grip, and he had to remind himself that it would be rude to mangle the furniture, and that he cared it would be rude. Had to carefully control his fingers to let go. Why wouldn’t Jim _say_ something? He just sat there, his stare enough to break Steve open, revealing all the truths he tried to hide from himself.

“You don’t know how hard it is. Or maybe you do,” Steve laughed hollowly. “Maybe it’s as bad for you as it is for me, for me to be here. I probably should have asked if you even wanted to see me again.” Steve swallowed, suddenly afraid that Jim would send him away, and that he would prefer that. Was it possible that would be better? Could anything be worse? “Sitting here is scarier than anything we ever did in the war. Jim, I can’t—I’m not—”

The confessions stuck on the lump in Steve’s throat and he hid his eyes like the coward he was. Jim’s aborted keen struck Steve to the core with shame. Who was he to burden an old man? 

“You won’t—” Jim cleared his throat. Every word shook with the effort of controlled emotion. “When I’m gone. You won’t be alone, Steve. Your—”

“I wish I would be.” The silence was stunning. Good, Steve thought viciously. Somebody else should have to suffer on Steve’s behalf, just this once. 

“Then you’re a damn fool, Rogers.” A fresh tear followed the track down Jim’s withered cheek and dripped into his cardigan. Steve couldn’t bear to meet Jim’s eyes, and looked out the window instead. February in Paramus was as dull and grey as in New York City. 

Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

Steve wanted to smash one of those clocks, or both of them. He wanted quiet. He wanted not to hear anymore. He wanted to be alone, completely and utterly. Just for a while. 

“I know you got dealt a shit hand twice, but you’re the only man I know who could be good anyway. But you don’t have to be. You don’t have to be perfect. I knew you less than a year, but that was a god-awful year. And you didn’t get mad or, or throw a punch you didn’t have to, or…not once. Do you know what I thought then?” 

Steve didn’t answer, kept studying the birdfeeder hanging empty from the naked tree outside without seeing it. 

“Do you know what I thought?” Jim demanded furiously. When Steve was able to turn to him, tears were streaming silently down Jim’s cheeks. “I thought you must be the best man in the whole goddamn Army.” Steve flinched at the fierceness of Jim’s belief. Belief in him. “No, don’t you—It was true, you know. I still think you’re the best man I’ve ever known, Steve Rogers.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not—”

Jim talked over Steve, “Shut up, Steve. Barnes always said you never knew when to shut up.” Steve’s jaws clamped shut at Bucky’s name and the first tear spilled, hot and stinging, onto his wrist. “And sometimes you can be a real stupid fuck. Being the best man doesn’t mean being perfect.” Jim paused to let this message sink in. “Do you hear me, Steve? Nobody expects you to be perfect. And if they do, they’re even stupider than you,” he added. 

Steve’s laugh sounded more like a sob. He rubbed his eyes roughly, “I don’t have any, _any_ illusions of being perfect.” 

“Then what’s the problem? I’m too old to waste time playing guessing games.” Jim sounded more exhausted than impatient.

“I didn’t realize, back then, that I was different. Or, how different I was. Schmidt, Red Skull, he told me we had ‘left humanity behind.’ I didn’t believe him since…”

“Since he was crazy as all Hell?” Jim suggested sarcastically.

“Something like that, yeah. But he was right, wasn’t he? He was right about all kinds of things—the Tesseract… That’s the—it’s not important. But I shouldn’t—I should be in here with you.”

“Well, you are here.”

“You know what I mean.” Steve closed his eyes. If he couldn’t see Jim’s face, it was almost like admitting it to his empty room. “We should be old men together. And we’re not. What if it’s always like this? What if I stay this way forever while everyone else, everyone human ages and dies around me? I’m not…” And this was the truth that kept Steve up at night. He covered his face. “I don’t want to be good forever. I don’t think I can be.”

Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. 

Jim didn’t say anything, but Steve was glad. There was nothing that Jim could say. 

Fabric rustled; a hand nudged Steve’s wrist, and he clasped it gratefully, carefully. He kept his eyes closed but shifted closer. 

They sat together, knees touching, heads inclined together over clasped hands, weeping silently – two old men mourning lost youthful innocence. 

XXX

Natasha cared for her weapons the way she did everything: calmly, methodically, and thoroughly. Three firearms, six throwing knives and a stouter dagger she carried regularly, an additional ten blades, and several lethal-looking devices that were not available in commercial markets, laid out neatly and precisely on a soft protective cloth. She did arms maintenance on the table in what was officially the dining room, though it had never been used as such as far as Natasha knew. Pepper must have made Tony build it. No way Tony would have done so unprompted. 

The sound of the copper brush through the barrel was soothing. 

When her internal clock struck noon, Natasha reassembled the Glock-26 and set it aside. Reaching for her favorite knife, the one that laid flat between her shoulder blades in a sheath sewn into her jumpsuit, she asked quietly aloud, “Any word?”

“From Captain Rogers?” JARVIS replied. Natasha knew that the AI knew exactly to whom she referred, and waited, rubbing the thin blade with a cloth between her fingers. “He has not contacted anyone at the Tower or at SHIELD, Miss Romanova.” 

The whetstone was wholly unnecessary – her knives were nothing but razor-sharp at all times – but the routine of rasping the hone along the blade was the best relaxation technique Natasha knew. Pity she hadn’t been able to convince Bruce of this. 

“He is still at the Emeritus facility in Paramus. Would you like me to place a call for you?” 

“No. I will.” 

“Of course, Miss Romanova.” 

The line rang three, four, five times. Natasha was halfway to her feet when Steve finally picked up. 

“Widow. What’s wrong?” His voice sounded thick. Distress. Crying?

“You didn’t report last night.” 

There was a short pause that felt long. “I’m visiting a friend. In Paramus.” He had cried recently. It wasn’t something Natasha did, but she didn’t begrudge that weakness to Steve. Brief weakness.

“Would you like someone to come pick you up when you’re done?”

“No. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying.” 

“Call me if you decide you do.” No obligation, no time frame. That was the closest Natasha ever came to offering friendship. Steve had earned it.

“Thanks, Natasha. Good-bye.” 

She returned to the task at hand, repeating the rote movements like an enchantment. It would not do to worry before worry was due.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my angsty Steve chapter. Be warned: there may be more to come. 
> 
> I have to admit that when I was writing, Paramus was the first name of a New Jersey city I could remember, and only about a million years later did I realize I only knew that because it's mentioned in _Captain America_ as one of the places Steve claimed to be from on his fraudulent enlistment forms. If you're wondering how Californian Jim Morita ended up in Paramus, the backstory I just invented a few seconds ago is that he met Sai on his way home through New York and moved east to marry her.


	4. Chapter 4

The locals called him _tikhom amerikanskom_ , the quiet American, but not to his face. That was fine, Bruce thought, because quiet meant the Other Guy had never shown his face. When they spoke to him, Bruce was just ‘doktor’ because that was all they needed or wanted him to be. In exchange for a little money or, among the poorest, food and coffee, Bruce bandaged their sores, set their broken bones, and delivered their babies. 

He had been in Shymkent for nearly two months, and hadn’t had an incident for almost four, not since the disaster that forced him to leave India. He would have preferred to stay there, where he knew enough of the language to get by, but it was dangerous to stay in a place he had lost his temper. The borders in the former Soviet states were easy enough to traverse under official radar, and the people with whom he associated were utterly ignorant of strange happenings in Chhattisgarh. 

Unfortunately, New York had been strange enough to capture the attention of the whole world. A few people had asked about it when they realized Bruce was American. He lied, saying that he had been in Malaysia; they had been disappointed. 

Overall, Shymkent was not the worst place Bruce could have ended up. In India, everyone was outside all the time. Inside had been claustrophobic and suffocating in the constant heat. Winter in Kazakhstan, even south Kazakhstan, was not nearly as kind as winter in India, though not the cruelest Bruce had ever known. Most of the day, people spent inside their cramped apartments, huddled around radiators. He liked to think that the cold gave him an extra incentive to suppress his alter ego; it would be awful to pass out naked in near-freezing temperatures. Of course, the threat of street gangs would be a more pressing concern than the weather. 

The young men without jobs, who were far more common than their salaried counterparts in this neighborhood, roamed the nearly abandoned streets in packs, spray painting what Bruce assumed were rude slogans on the already tagged cement walls and smoking endlessly in empty lots. He never saw young women, except those that scurried between buildings like they were afraid of being noticed, hair hidden under scarves and never lifting their eyes from the ground. Children, too, seemed absent from the spread of uniform cement tenements, except for the toddlers and infants that Bruce saw with their grandparents. The very old and the very young were the bulk of his patients, though rarely a week passed without Bruce being asked to remove a bullet from some young man who crossed the wrong street or bought from the wrong dealer. 

Luckily, no one had tried to engage Bruce’s services at the end of gun barrel. 

The woman living three doors down the hallway from Bruce was dying of thyroid cancer. Bibigul was probably in her sixties; she did not have a birth certificate, or a solid conception of when she had been born, but it didn’t really matter. Bruce knew when she would die with much more certainty. He spent most of his time with her, trying to make her more comfortable before the inevitable.

They passed the time companionably, and mostly in silence. Usually, the literal lump in her throat made breathing so difficult that Bibigul did little more than wheeze, cough, and point to make her meaning known. Even if she could have spoken easily, Bibigul either only spoke or refused to speak anything but Kazakh, and Bruce knew only a few words in Russian.

The twenty-fifth of February, Bibigul urgently wanted to talk to him.

“What is it? Bibi, I don’t—where is Aiday? _Doch’_? _Gde doch’_? Where is your daughter?” Aiday had no problem speaking Russian, though this only slightly reduced the language barrier. “Is something hurting? _Gde bol’_?” he gently palpated her swollen neck – the tumor felt a little bigger just in the past few days; it wouldn’t be long now – but she brushed his hands away impatiently, pointing emphatically. “What, something on TV?” 

For some reason, the old woman had become insistent lately that she have the television on all day. As her symptoms progressed, Bibigul could not longer sew or crochet for pennies, but it was only within the past week that she demanded Aiday turn on their television before leaving for work at five in the morning. The two women owned a twelve-inch cathode ray television with honest-to-God bunny ears that Bruce thought might give Tony literal hives. Bibigul had seemed to be waiting for something to happen, but Bruce didn’t know what it could be. 

“Do you want me to change the channel?” Bruce wondered how he might mime this concept. 

Bibigul seemed to be repeating one word, widening her eyes to impress upon Bruce how important it was, and gesturing toward the truly abysmal picture. From the format, Bruce suspected it was a news program. Pushing his glasses up his nose, Bruce squinted at the small, slightly shaky, pixelated image. A woman with the universal small town news anchor look was speaking rapid-fire Russian with a perfectly straight face before the picture changed to show a fireball streaking across a clear sky. This clip repeated several times in the next few minutes, alternating with a map showing a yellow line across southern Russia.

“I think it’s a meteoroid? Is this what you’re talking about?” He looked back at Bibigul and pointed at the screen. “ _Eto_? Is this what you wanted me to see?” She clapped her hands and bared her few teeth in a wide smile; Bruce had never seen the old woman so happy. “I don’t get it,” Bruce muttered to himself, watching as the televised sky was rent again.

XXX

Director Fury saw Maria Hill marching purposefully toward his office and internally sighed. That expression, barely discernable from her other expressions though it was, never bode well. 

“Director,” Hill dipped her chin slightly as a salute. “There may be a situation in Russia.” 

“There either is, or there isn’t, Agent. Which is it?” 

Unhesitatingly, Hill amended to “There is a situation of unknown magnitude in Russia, sir.” Fury didn’t blink, and she took that as an invitation to elaborate. “A meteoroid broke up over the city of Chelyabinsk yesterday at about nine hundred-thirty local time. Nobody predicted its arrival,” she glanced at the clipboard in her hands. “There have been hundreds of reported casualties from the shock wave generated by its explosion, virtually all superficial, but we’re more worried about the radiation signature, and keeping that aspect of the incident quiet.”

“What kind of radiation?” Fury inquired sharply. The last thing he needed was a hoard of Russian peasant Hulks. 

“Not gamma,” Hill correctly interpreted the question’s direction. “It’s unlike anything we have on record, but—” The clipboard dropped to her side as Hill finished grimly, “The squints are calling it Hawking radiation.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me, Agent Hill?”

“It’s a black hole, sir.”

Fury inhaled slowly through his nose to give himself a moment of perfect peace before the shitstorm Hill had revealed consumed his life. “A black hole,” he repeated flatly. 

“Yes, sir. The science department are pissing themselves in excitement.”

“Call them in.”

It was going to be a long, long week. 

XXX

By the time Aiday returned from the plant and Bruce felt no qualms about returning to his own room, he and Bibigul had received nine visitors. They had been uniformly elderly, or what passed for elderly in Kazakhstan, some escorted by younger relatives, and had all brought small gifts and made obeisance multiple times to Bruce’s dying charge during their stays. One of the grandsons, who Bruce would swear he had seen skulking in an alley near the tobacconist’s with a gang he had quickly pegged as violent, spoke enough broken English to intimate to Bruce that Bibigul was something of a shaman. The old women had brought food and homemade cloths as offerings, payment for having Bibigul read their fortunes. It did not take a man of Bruce’s intellect to make the connection between the meteoroid and this sudden influx of interest in a terminal patient.

Aiday came home looking resigned, like she was tired of such backward superstition but certain the meteoroid would whip up a storm of the same. She had grimaced to see there were still two women and their granddaughters drinking strong coffee on the floor next to Bibigul’s mattress. Bruce had waved off her apologies for the constant stream of company and walked back to his room to find out more about the meteoroid and Kazakh shamanism.

The next morning, Aiday showed him Bibigul’s body; the old lady had been dead for several hours. It was far beyond his Russian medical vocabulary, but Bruce thought Aiday was saying that her mother had predicted she would die when the sun fell from the sky. Bruce crumpled up the paper on which he had phonetically written out his speech in Russian about how to care for Bibi in the final days, and found himself back in his own apartment. That day, he prescribed medication for an infestation of worms, diagnosed a kidney stone, and watched CNN coverage of the explosion over Chelyabinsk on his computer. 

The next night, a man wearing a nondescript dark grey suit and large, old-fashioned wire-rim glasses came to Bruce’s door. 

“Let me guess,” Bruce said before the man spoke, “I’m strongly encouraged to return to the States.” 

“Dr. Banner,” the man nodded. Recalling the agent who had helped organize the Avengers last September, Bruce thought such bland competence must be a SHIELD prerequisite. 

Bruce sighed. “I’ll get my bags.” He left the door hanging open so he remained in the agent’s sightline the whole time. 

Valiantly trying to quash the happy bubble that bloomed in his chest at the prospect of seeing his frien—Tony and the other Avengers, Bruce allowed himself to be led away from quiet anonymity.

XXX

“I think we’re in Russia,” the man squinted at a distant road sign in Cyrillic print. “Somewhere in Eastern Europe, anyway.” 

“Well, fuck,” the woman responded easily. Her companion took this revelation more poorly, kicking an icy clod in a fit of pique. “Settle down, _dongsaeng_. This doesn’t mean anything.”

He rounded on her angrily, “Don’t you tell me what to do! You think the Russians will want me any less?” 

Coldly, she hissed, “If you think we are in danger, perhaps you should not call attention to yourself!” He opened his mouth but she interjected quickly, “I know we are alone now, but as a general rule!

“It could have worked exactly as we expected; it could have only transported us. It’s too soon to tell. Either way, we need more information. Do you speak Russian?” His reply was a withering look. “No matter. Someone will speak English.” She resumed walking; a moment later, still scowling, the man caught up.

“It should have worked, I don’t know what I did wrong.” He sighed heavily, shoulders slumping. “We should have brought passports. Why didn’t we think of that?”

She reached up and soothingly, proprietarily patted him on the head. “Apparently, we were overconfident in the outcome.” 

They walked several miles before a car passed them. Either the hitchhiking signal was not known in Russia, or the driver was an asshole. 

It was nearly nightfall before they came to a petrol station. As they approached the squat building, they debated speaking directly to anyone while they were stranded. She reasoned that they would have to talk to someone eventually, and they might be able to get transport to a city. He feared incarceration, either by immigration or more predatory agencies. The conversation ended with her ignoring his objections as she walked inside. He gave vent to his feelings by relieving himself against the side of the building; if he was going to have to run, he figured he might as well be as light as possible.

Twenty minutes later, she emerged with a paper and an air of great excitement. “Look at this!” she held the newspaper out like a sacred relic, cheeks glowing pink from more than the cold. 

Like the signs they had passed, it was covered in characters that were utterly meaningless to the man. There was a large color photograph on the front page that showed a streak of light in the sky over a city street and above that—

“That’s the date? Today’s date?” She nodded eagerly. His face seemed to have gone numb. “It’s 2013?” 

She punched his arm gleefully. “I told you it worked!” 

He let out what felt like all the air in his lungs and grabbed her arm to steady himself. “Well, it’s something, anyway.”

The woman laughed at his reservation and pulled him down to kiss his forehead before she tugged him, gripping the paper with both hands like a lifeline, toward a car parked to the side of the way station. With a mischievous grin, she pulled a key ring from her jacket pocket and jangled it smugly in front of him. “Sixty kilometers southeast to the nearest airport.”

“Rook, I love you.” 

“I know.” 

As the engine ignited with a cough and they drove away in full view of the proprietor, her eyes flashed an unnatural yellow.


	5. Chapter 5

On her fourth birthday, Darcy Lewis got her first and only Barbie doll. After the party – which is insane; children should be quarantined until their brains fully develop, not given sugar and power – the box with the smiling blonde lady inside it had disappeared from the pile of gifts. Her ardently feminist mother had categorically denied any knowledge of its whereabouts and suggested that Darcy had imagined receiving it. 

Looking back, Darcy realized that her mother had done her a favor. There was no doubt in her mind that all the other women in the room had played _exclusively_ with anatomically incorrect miniaturized porn dolls when they were young. There was no other way to explain their nearly identical hairstyles, outfits, and attitudes, all of which corresponded with Darcy’s conception of ‘Career Girl’ Barbie. 

“Oh, my God, exactly! If she had done that, Hillary would be in office right now. In 2016, though!” Barbie-3 punched the air to punctuate her optimism, and she and Barbie-4 giggled over their low-fat soy lattes at their attempt at political thought. Because one of the firm’s partners was a favorite for the senate seat, obviously. Crossing her legs irritably, Darcy resisted the urge to find out if knocking their heads together would sound hollowly. Beside her, Barbie-1 ostentatiously twisted her ridiculously large engagement ring, trying to invite Darcy to comment. Darcy pointedly pulled out her iPod and turned the music up loud enough to drown out the tittering.

Her interview went well, but Darcy knew she wouldn’t get the job. Why would she, when she could muster no genuine enthusiasm for the prospect, and the Barbs were practically perkiness personified? Also, the receptionist had had to call Darcy’s name twice to get her attention, which was apparently scandalous at a job interview.

It was Darcy’s third such failure in a week, and made all the worse by ramen noodles for dinner.

She called Jane; Jane did not pick up. After an episode of _The Big Bang Theory_ and two beers, Darcy called Jane again and left a message. 

“Hey, Janey, tell me Tarzan isn’t back. I don’t want to have to imagine that you two’re having sex instead of answering my calls.” Darcy paused, tickling her cheek with the ends of her hair thoughtfully. “Actually, I’m being whiney. That’s totally hot. Listen, I know you’re doing important sciencey shit in Norway or whatever, but my interview went not so great and—aagh, sorry!” Darcy clapped a hand to her head. “I wasn’t going to bring that up. That’s my bad. Call me back. I promise I will keep the bitchiness to a minimum. For me.” 

Halfway through her third beer, Darcy’s phone rang.

“Madame Jezebel’s: we make your sinful dreams come true!” Darcy chirped, and then giggled at herself.

“Ms. Lewis?” a slightly taken aback voice responded. 

“Oh, yeah.” Guiltily, Darcy sat up a little straighter. “Yeah, that’s me, Darcy Lewis.” 

“Ah. Ms. Lewis, this is Agent Jasper Sitwell of SHIELD.”

“Holy shit!” Darcy jumped up, swearing more colorfully as she knocked her shin against the coffee table and nearly upset her beer bottles. “Sorry, that’s not for you, Agent, sir, I mean—crap. I haven’t said anything to anyone, honest! What are you talking about, New Mexico? Nothing happened in New Mexico! I haven’t even _been_ to—” 

“Ms. Lewis!” Sitwell cut her off sharply. “If SHIELD thought you had been indiscreet about certain incidents you might have been privy to, I assure you that we would not be speaking over the phone.”

Darcy gulped. “Yes, sir. I mean no! No, sir.”

Sitwell didn’t actually sigh, but Darcy could sense his exasperation through the phone line. “You called Dr. Foster. SHIELD has engaged her with regard to an astrophysical event of some interest to us. It is a confidential project, so we would prefer to read as few people in as possible. Unfortunately,” he continued mildly, like it was only unfortunate in the abstract sense, “Dr. Foster has expressed certain…displeasure at working with our technicians. Luckily for you both, you already have Level 2 clearance. There is a ticket for a flight to New York that leaves at twenty-two hundred-ten hours from the nearest airport.” 

Dumbfounded, it took Darcy a moment to process Sitwell’s succinct sitrep and articulate an appropriate response. “Are you offering me a job?”

“No, Ms. Lewis, I am requisitioning your services. Don’t miss your flight.” He hung up. 

Darcy stared at her phone; the call had lasted just two minutes and forty-nine seconds. “Holy shit,” she whispered to her empty apartment. A moment later, she yelped, “Holy shit!” and scrambled to pack. She didn’t know how long she would be gone, or what she was going to be doing, but Darcy didn’t care. Working with Jane and superheroes instead of Barbies and political wannabes was incentive enough. 

Half an hour later, Darcy stumbled out the door, not bothering to cast a last fond look at the apartment to which she might never return and cursing the unwieldiness of simultaneously handling a heavy duffel bag, a pillow, and a suitcase with one stuck wheel. 

She hoped that Sitwell had arranged for her Taser to go through security. 

XXX

After drinking most of a bottle of vodka, Tony had forgiven himself for the momentary failing of watching Steve’s interview. Waking up hung-over was fast becoming a common occurrence – again – and Tony didn’t have to puzzle over when or why that particular pattern had resurfaced. As much as he hated to do so, he had to admit he was human. Humans were to be allowed their completely reasonable, not at all Tony’s fault crushes, weren’t they?

However, he could not forgive himself for whatever was happening with Clint. Tony didn’t think Natasha had told him what had happened in the gym a few weeks ago. Clint Barton had many qualities, but neither thoughtful nor discreet was among them. If he knew that Tony had a hard-on for Captain America, nobody in the Tri-state area would hear the end of it. Still, Barton was not stupid, and he had caught Tony’s mistake. He knew enough to start prodding at Tony’s love life, and that was reason enough to hide in the lab for the foreseeable future.

At least, Tony assumed he was in his private laboratory. The concrete beneath him felt like the lab. 

He should probably open his eyes, just to be certain. 

“JARVIS—gah!” Tony scraped his tongue against his teeth in an attempt to remove the film of alcohol, grateful that at least the lights were low. “Leave me _alone_ , Dummy,” he snapped at robotic arm prodding his shoulder. It was going to bruise and Tony would have to remember to update Dummy to comprehend the tensile strength of flesh and bone. “Go back to not doing your job. What time is it, JARVIS?”

“It is nearly ten-thirty in the morning, sir.” JARVIS sounded clipped, disapproving. “Would you also like to know the date, sir?” 

Now, that was definitely sarcasm. Tony contemplated getting up, nixed the concept, and commented from the floor, “That’s a little snarky, JARVIS. That’s my thing, don’t take my thing. Hey,” he realized, “aren’t you supposed to tell me, ‘Good morning’? Are you violating your protocols?”

“I am an artificial intelligence, sir, emphasis on intelligence. I judged the parameters of the occasion to be outside the accepted definition of a ‘good morning.’” 

“Well. Can’t argue with you there.” 

There was nothing else for it. Tony heaved himself to a sitting position and groaned at the feeling of steel ballast resettling in his head. “Oh, God, that’s… Fuck. Natasha should label that stuff. That is…fucking lethal. What am I doing? Right, we were talking about the date. What day is it? No, doesn’t matter, don’t tell me. JARVIS, I would be upset about your blatant insubordination, but I created you, so I’m going to take it as a compliment.”

“I’m sure you do, sir.” 

“See?” By some miracle, Tony crawled into a chair without falling. “I made a computer program that uses sarcasm intelligently, I’m incredible. I should get awards. More, I mean. No, Dummy, I told you—why do you do this? I don’t want—” Dummy was knocking machine parts and tools off the table in the process of trying to hand Tony a cup of God-knows how old coffee. Tony sighed, eying the pieces as they clattered to the floor. Had he taken apart a toaster? What had he been trying to do? Did he even _have_ a toaster?

No, going down the rabbit hole was the worst mistake he could make. 

The events of the past two days before slowly resolved in Tony’s memory. Scratch that; the worst mistake would be to ask JARVIS when—if Steve had come back. 

Absent-mindedly, Tony began fiddling with the mechanical remains on his desk; as improbable at it was, it seemed part of his drunken haze had been spent giving the toaster flight capabilities. Taking this as a cue, Dummy began picking up the dropped bits, which promptly led to the mug of stale coffee being knocked over. 

Tony was just getting into stride, a thoroughly castigated Dummy drooping theatrically, when Pepper arrived. 

“Tony,” she greeted him with her customary air of steel-reinforced serenity. “You have twenty minutes to make yourself presentable.”

“And good morning to you, Madame President,” Tony backed away as he spoke while trying not to appear to be retreating. “Uh, I’d love to, but I can’t. It’s, um…” He threw himself back into the chair and pulled up a random file. “Very busy, not a good time—”

“Yes, I can see that.” Tony was mildly offended that Pepper didn’t spare a glance away from her PDA to pretend to go along with his dodging before she continued, “This is very important, Tony. Shower. Shave. Wear something that does not advertise defunct bands.” 

Heaving a melodramatic sigh, Tony stood, but he didn’t move toward the elevator. “Pepper, whatever it is, I trust your judgment. That’s why I made you president, and you don’t need me to tell you that you’re way better at it than I ever was. I know I’m the creative power of Stark Industries, but the board doesn’t even like me, so it’s really not helpful—counterproductive, even, to drag me to the meetings.” 

Pepper cut him off smoothly, “I don’t disagree, and this isn’t a board meeting. Or a publicity event, or a charity luncheon.” 

Tony ran through the other options and pouted, “Oh, come on, Pep, I have JARVIS, I don’t need to go to the doctor. Look at me, I’m in perfect health,” he held out his arms and did a slightly wobbly pirouette to demonstrate. Her look said she was surprised that he had thought that would help his case. “Okay, that’s just--don’t worry about that. I’m a little hungover, is all—tell her, JARVIS.” 

“That’s quite unnecessary, Tony. You think I don’t know what you look like after you’ve been drinking?” Her voice was as calm as ever, but there was a flicker of grief and, fuck him, pity in Pepper’s eyes. It was a look that always got him, and Tony could only love Pepper more fervently that she never calculatedly wielded her power. 

Taking a deep breath through her nose, Pepper flashed a professional smile and assured Tony they were not going to the doctor, or the dentist, and then reiterated her instructions. Keeping up a stream of complaints, because digging in his heels was what was expected of him, Tony acquiesced. 

Twenty-eight minutes later, he piled into the town car next to Pepper, freshly bathed but still scruffy and wearing a vintage Star Wars t-shirt under his leather jacket. Hey, one and a half out of three was practically docile. “So, it occurred to me. We aren’t going to the vet, are we?” Tony eyed Pepper with mock suspicion over his sunglasses. That got him a genuinely amused smile, and Tony almost didn’t mind that Pepper was taking him to SHIELD.

Almost.

XXX

_“Stark got called in.”_

_“Getting Steve from NJ.”_

Clint hadn’t thought that retirement homes let guests stay overnight. Maybe they made exceptions for Captain America.

_”Am I the only one left out?”_

_”Only Stark.”_

Absent of other knowledge, she was treating it like a threat. Of course, Natasha wouldn’t allow the unit to be made vulnerable by separation. Clint took a moment to despise Fury for not treating them like the team he had forged them into. For not being Coulson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this whole fic is for scifigrl47, I put in a little reference to her brilliant Toaster 'Verse series. This 'verse isn't in any way a continuation or a remix of those stories, but I'm a fan of in-jokes. For the second time, I have to recommend everything she's written - it is brilliant.


	6. Chapter 6

Once at the surprisingly posh Chelyabinsk airport, they had realized they had few options. Neither spoke the language, neither had credit cards or paper money, and neither had valid identification to cross international borders. Against his instincts, they loitered for hours, looking for openings. It still spooked the man that everything was so similar to the time and place they had left behind, but there was no opportunity to dwell on niggling fears. He followed Rook’s lead trustingly. With a flicker of yellow irises, they snuck into an underbooked late-night flight to Moscow.

The flight attendants never looked at them, and the inhuman gleam in Rook’s eyes did not fade until they deplaned at Sheremetyevo International Airport. 

Although it felt like he had been a fugitive for his whole adult life, it was the first time that the man had ever bathed at a sink in a public bathroom, and he hoped never to have to repeat the experience. Thankfully, it seemed to be a not uncommon occurrence, and the businessmen who cast him disgusted looks did not summon security. Perhaps his strange clothing, stubble, and blood-speckled eyes convinced them that he was a man it was not wise to cross. 

He slid onto the bench in the food court next to his companion. “I see you found some money,” he nodded at her McDonald’s. She flashed a small smirk and offered him some French fries. It was the first hot food he had eaten in nearly thirty-six hours.

“I’m too tired to censor, so keep the porn noises to a minimum.”

“It’ll be tough.” He sucked the salt from his fingertips. “What’s the plan?”

Rook sat back and jerked her elbow toward a bag wedged between her body and the half-wall that enclosed the booth. It was the sort of purse an understated middle-aged woman might carry, and hadn’t been with her before. “I lifted some papers. You up to changing them?” She cast an appraising look to his bloodshot eyes. “I can glamor them, but it won’t work through immigration; they’d see my eyes, and a projection’s too risky.”

The man’s head pounded just thinking about it but he nodded brusquely, ignoring her suspicious glance. “That’s what it takes, so I’ll do it. Where are we from?” 

“US.” 

“Is that where we’re going?” He attempted an off-hand tone, but his shoulders were tense as took a drink of her soda. 

“I think we should, yes. Stop worrying, _dongsaeng_. Look, I got this, too,” she pulled a slim leather sheath from the bag and handed it off to him. His brows rose and he gently ran his fingers across the leather case and black, fingerprint-covered face of the device inside. “That button there makes it light up,” she pointed. “I think it’s a computer. You can check.”

“A computer?” It was so light and thin. There was no keyboard or mouse. How—? The screen blinked to life, bright and colorful. ‘Slide to unlock’… This belonged to someone else, so he didn’t hesitate to experimentally put his forefinger to the screen and pull it carefully in the direction of the arrow. “Whoa…”

Food forgotten, the man began systematically exploring this remarkable device, tapping the square icons to see what came up. There were a baffling number of what seemed to be games, which he quickly exited. Eventually, he found the button styled after a compass face that led to the Internet. The first page was a greeting from the airport that, when he pressed on the British flag for an English translation, asked for a credit card number to access the wireless network. Rook wordlessly handed him a blue American Express that belonged to Charles Edmondson. 

Several Internet searches quickly convinced the man of what Rook had concluded after seeing the paper. Limb-trembling relief coursed through him, and he couldn’t contain a shout of laughter. The woman smiled indulgently as she set down a second tray of food courtesy of Mr. Edmondson. 

“Believe me now?”

“I can’t believe it. It worked! A hundred percent, perfectly, it worked. This is a completely different world.” He set aside the thing, the iPad, and voraciously ripped into his hamburger. “None of it, none of them exist at all, Rook! We’re safe. I’m safe.” He laughed again, “I’ll bet I’m the only one in the whole world!”

“Yes, yes, eat. I knew you could do it.” Rook flipped open the case and carefully mimicked the swipe that unlocked the tablet but seemed content to admire the jewel-bright program tiles without touching any of them. “Once we get to the States and get more permanent identities, you can go back to school and I can…” she frowned as she trailed off, like she hadn’t quite considered this possibility.

Oblivious, the man contemplated his rosy future as he chewed. “We can live totally normal lives, start over completely. I guess I’ll have to get my undergraduate degrees again. Oh, my God, I don’t even have a high school diploma, do I? I’ll have to get a GED!” Finally, he noticed her unhappy expression and clasped her hand reassuringly. “Hey, we’re going to stick together, Rook. I can’t do this without you; you know that, right? You aren’t going to abandon me, either, are you?”

She smiled brilliantly and squeezed his fingers, but it was just a little overdone to be an honest response. “Of course I’m not. I won’t leave you, _dongsaeng_.”

He smiled absently, searching her face for some clue as to what was really wrong. What she had said, he believed, but he didn’t think the possibility of separating was what had first upset her. Unattended, the iPad went blank in her hands. “We’ll have to get new names first.” 

Her eyes flashed angrily, “I will not give up my name, and neither should you. A name is your history, your blood.” 

“I just mean in public, for bills and boring stuff like that,” he reassured her. “I don’t really need to be reminded of my blood,” he smiled wryly, “but I’ll remember your name: Ruk-haï H’yuna Alis. Can’t forget a name like that.”

“And I will keep yours,” she promised earnestly, “Kristoffer Isak Ibsen.”

“Well, now that’s settled,” he said with determined lightness, stuffing a last fry into his mouth and crumpling up his hamburger wrapper as he stood. “Let’s go find a private place for me to do some unparalleled document forgery.”

XXX

The ride back to New York was quiet. Natasha’s taciturnity usually made Steve more than a bit uneasy, but in this instance, he was grateful that she wasn’t prying. Even if she could probably surmise everything he had done since he left from the set of the _Colbert Report_ at a glance. 

Still, it was uncomfortable sitting at red lights with only the click of the turn signal filling the silence. They were crossing the state border when Steve finally came up with a topic that did not invite questions about why he had spent nearly two days at a retirement home. “There was a meteor in Russia yesterday.” 

“In Chelyabinsk, yes.”

“Have you been there?” 

“No. But one Siberian city looks much like the rest, so I have no difficulty imagining it.”

Steve didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

Natasha’s grip on the steering wheel shifted minutely. “I think there was more to the meteor than is on the news. Fury called Tony into SHIELD right after the news broke. Just Tony.” 

“Not Loki again,” Steve assessed instantly. “Fury would call us all in for that.” He would ruthlessly deny feeling a flutter of excitement in the pit of his stomach while there was a chance Natasha would contradict him, say there was another mission imminent—

“Chelyabinsk is definitely not Loki’s style.” The wicked eagerness that had never happened in the first place flagged. 

“How many people have the power to do something on the magnitude of a meteor?” Steve wondered aloud.

Natasha spared him a look that clearly advised him not to ask questions with worrisome answers.

Steve squinted through the glare of bleak winter light reflecting off the glass giants of the city before remembering that there were visors for just this sort of situation. “If there is something off about it and Fury needs Tony to figure it out, he might have called Bruce, too. Aren’t rocks from space more Bruce’s thing?” 

“Even Tony Stark admits that Bruce is the most brilliant mind of our times,” Natasha smiled briefly. “That makes everything his thing.”

Steve hid his grin by looking out his window. 

XXX

Tony realized his mouth was slightly agape and snapped it shut. “Let me get this straight,” he whipped off his sunglasses to impress upon Fury how serious he was. “You have readings from a micro-black hole inside the Earth’s atmosphere. _Inside the atmosphere_.” Was he the only one who understood how insane this was? “You know that’s impossible, right? Camel through the eye of a needle impossible.”

Fury, damn him, didn’t seem the least bit impressed. “Our science department has concluded that it can only be Hawking radiation, and I know that you don’t think highly of their work because they’re not you,” Fury preempted with maddening accuracy, “but they are, in fact, extremely good at what they do. I can assure you that all the evidence indicates that a black hole existed for about three picoseconds above Russia in conjunction with the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteoroid.” Fury slapped a file printed with SHIELD’s logo down in front of Tony, face unreadable as he loomed over Tony. It was most definitely not, in any way, a little bit intimidating. “I hope those words mean more to you than they do to me, because you need to explain to me how it happened and who was behind it. Because astounding though it may be, you are right, Mr. Stark; black holes do not just happen.”

Tony skimmed the folder’s contents briefly. “Well, fuck me sideways,” he declared, and tossed the folder into the air. “You broke physics.” Amid the flutter of papers, Tony stood and gripped Fury’s hand. “Congratulations on that, Director. You should definitely go digital, by the way. It’s kind of embarrassing, an espionage organization with a flying aircraft carrier leaving a paper trail everywhere. While we’re on the subject, you really ought to let me redesign the Helicarrier for you, before repairs get too far underway; I can make it so much better than those lobotomized apes you hire as engineers. Anyway, nice talk. I’m sure I will see you, in the future, against my will. Ciao.” 

Fury seemed determined to get on all of Tony’s nerves today. “I realize you’re not used to having a boss, Mr. Stark, but this is an order.” 

Tony grinned savagely as he wheeled back. “I don’t work for you, Eyepatch, and I’d like to see you try to give me an order, I really would. I’m going to work on this project because it’s what I want to do, and only by sheer fucking coincidence does that overlap with what you want.” They were toe to toe, assessing each other aggressively.

Fury’s low voice vibrated with authority, “I assure you, Stark, you will enjoy the day our interests do not intersect much less than I will.”

Tony smiled dangerously, “And for the sake of the bystanders, I hope that day never comes.” 

Posture relaxing, he morphed seamlessly back into the tycoon with his mind already on other things. In a display of insolence, Tony replaced his sunglasses and spoke with his attention on his Starkphone, “I assume you’ve already recalled Bruce from whatever mission of goodwill he’s been on because you’re not a hopeless idiot and physics is Bruce’s bitch. Send everything you have on the meteoroid to JARVIS – the raw data, not the confused ramblings of your science department – and send Dr. Banner directly to Avengers Tower when he gets here.” 

Fury bared his teeth in what was a smile only in the technical sense, as though the meeting had gone exactly the way he had wanted it to do. Which it had _not_ , Tony thought sourly, because Tony was a maverick and a rebel by nature and Fury could not predict him. “Then you can also house Dr. Foster and her assistant.” 

Unwilling to be caught flatfooted, Tony quickly agreed, “Fine. Plenty of room. The more, the…whatever.” 

“You can expect them before midnight. I look forward to hearing what you come up with.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it will change our understanding of the universe. No promises, but I might mention you in my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.” Tony gave a mock salute and left before Fury could surprise him again, the creepy-ass motherfucker. Tony’s appreciation of surprises started with accidentally inventing a marketable product and ended with attractive women slipping their panties into his jacket pocket during dinner. Anything Fury could possibly come up with was categorically outside of that range.


	7. Chapter 7

The arrow thudded into the target, exactly where Clint had pictured it landing as he had pulled the string taut; he scowled. As awesome as the range Tony had built was, (1) Clint would never admit as much, not even under the kind of torture he had endured in Islamabad, and (2) it didn’t change the fact that Clint had been grounded. It wasn’t an official deactivation, but he had been on exactly one mission since Loki had made Clint his Muppet and it had been, without doubt, the worst mission SHIELD had ever given him. It had gone exactly as planned and Clint had fucking killed it, but that’s because it had been a training exercise in which Clint pretended to stalk junior agents so they could practice identifying tails and because he is a _professional_. It wasn’t that Clint couldn’t understand their wariness was justified, but he could hate being the only one in the class made to use kiddie scissors. 

Coulson would have looked Clint in the eye, long enough that Clint would have wanted to look away – but he wouldn’t have allowed himself to – and found Clint’s soul. Coulson would have known, and he would have given Clint a chance. Coulson would have expected more and better, and Clint pushed himself harder, longer, stronger, to not disappoint him. 

But Coulson was not there, because Clint had not been there.

Three more shafts found the paper target in quick succession, crowding together, obscuring Loki’s left eye completely. Bulls-eying a surveillance video screenshot improved Clint’s mood even less than shooting probies in the ass with rubber bullets had.

His breath was ever controlled, even. A sniper does not express emotion during the shot. Heart rate picks up, breathing becomes erratic, adrenalin pumps, fingers shake— Anger and fear make you imprecise, inaccurate.

Inhale… Exhale.

Inhale… Clint’s arms protested the strain of cocking the arrow for so long, but they did not waver. Exhale—it smashed through the thicket of still quivering shafts bristling from the eyes of Loki’s picture. 

If making the shot was the only good anyone thought he could do, Clint would be perfect. He would grieve and submit to his penance mutely, every arrow a salute and an apology.

XXX

Anyone else would see Clint retrieving his arrows and putting up a new target, farther away and smaller than the previous, and call him _stoic_. _Deadly_. _Focused_. He was all of those things. Only Natasha could sense the corrosion, the rot that infected him. 

If it affected his performance, Natasha would have to do something, but Clint was the same as ever. His stance was solid, his instincts sharp; it was like his body and mind were perfectly sound, but the wrong blood knit him together. The ill was in some intangible medium – His soul? What was the world for a spy if she has to understand men’s souls as well as their appetites and ambitions? – and Natasha didn’t know how to treat this kind of wound. She only knew, intuitively, that a mistake could be worse than doing nothing.

Natasha left without speaking to Clint; he had never looked in her direction, but Natasha knew that he knew that she had been there. Maybe that would be enough.

She knew it was not enough.

XXX

Tony Stark entered every room like a whirlwind. But that was good, today especially; whirlwinds were distracting, and Steve wanted a distraction. Tony’s gaze flicked over his face and was gone in a moment, looking for something more interesting. 

“What did Fury want?”

“The usual. We had scones, admired each other’s bitching facial hair, threatened each other with disproportionate violence, and then we talked about astrophysics. Two of those actually happened, and I’ll give you three guesses to figure out which.”

They each moved with the other, circling like big cats in an undersized cage, keeping the distance between them constant. “Anything I need to know?”

The pause between the question and Tony’s snide smirk and reply – “I know you’re supposed to be smarter than the average GI Joe action figure, but smart isn’t the same thing as knowledgeable. It’s a little out of your league.” – was a beat too long.

“Okay.” For a split second, Tony looked surprised and a little disappointed that Steve had backed down so quickly. Steve realized that Tony didn’t know that Steve suspected what he and Fury had discussed and therefore Tony’s glib dismissal was meant to have come off more personal. Getting one-up on Tony was nice; Steve turned away with intentional insouciance. “Will Dr. Banner be staying here?” 

“Oh, nice try,” Tony waggled his finger sardonically at Steve, “I know you get your information from professional weapon of mass terror, Xenia Onatopp. Of course Bruce will come here, what is that question? I mean, where else—it would be stupid to put him anywhere else.” Tony flopped on the couch, transforming the smooth glass surface of the side table into a computer screen with a careless twitch of his hand. “Bruce likes it here, way more than he would like anything SHIELD has. He stayed with me after—I got him a room and everything,” Tony continued mumbling to whatever JARVIS was showing him. Steve suspected he could leave without Tony noticing, and was sorely tempted; he stayed.

“Don’t we all have rooms?” 

“No. Well, you’re all staying here – God knows why, I’m not running a halfway home for superheroes—sorry, I know you don’t like that term, what would you prefer? It’s really the best fit – but those are just regular rooms. I designed Bruce’s room myself, just for him. Of course, the whole building is designed to withstand a Hulk-out, but I made the room to ensure that doesn’t happen in the first place. Special sealing and air filtration and drainage, industrial-grade sound proofing, en-suite kitchenette and chemical storage, biohazard disposal, biometric entry to the whole thing for when he wants to be alone – I thought of everything.” He rattled this off proudly, applauding his own capacity to forestall problems and provide solutions before complications had the opportunity to arise. Steve heard the arrogance, but also recognized the kernel of selfless kindness hidden in the storm of words. It was the sort of off-handed thoughtfulness that Tony always left in his wake. Steve was confident Tony was unaware of it, probably willfully. 

Steve was also confident that Tony was lying about his and Natasha’s and Clint’s rooms. Admittedly, they might not be as radically customized as Bruce’s seemed to be, but Steve doubted it was a coincidence that his was the only tiny portion of Tony’s sphere of influence where all of the technology was relegated to one space, where it could be ignored if he didn’t want to feel suffocated. Nor did he think it simply chance that Natasha’s bedroom had no less than three exits, not including the concealed second door out of the attached bath. It was not dumb luck that Clint had the only windows that opened far enough to let him onto the exterior face of the Tower, right next to the joint in the building skeleton that he could follow to the roof. By tacit agreement, an inexplicable agreement in Steve’s opinion, none of them acknowledged these things.

“Bruce’ll be here tonight,” Tony was saying. “Him and some other person SHIELD has commandeered for Queen Fury and country. JARVIS, have Happy waiting at the airfield for them. Tell him to punch out whoever SHIELD has escorting them if he has to.”

“Tony…” Steve admonished as JARVIS confirmed the directive.

“Steve!” Tony shot back instantly. It was an annoying habit Tony had developed, and was apparently exploring all the possible inflections he could give Steve’s name. 

Steve crossed his arms and leaned against the bar. He couldn’t bring himself to mind too much; it was something Bucky would have done. “That’s a good one. What would you call that, whiney preteen robot?” 

“I was actually going for sea lion on helium and weed, but I can see where you would get the two confused.” 

Steve chuckled, Tony’s wry grin relaxed, and it was suddenly and completely _home_. It was brief, gone in a second – Tony swept out as dramatically as he had entered, complaining to his incorporeal butler like a madman inveighs aloud to God – but it gave Steve hope. 

XXX

They had decided to rename themselves Ben Cohen and Anna Darwin. By the time the passports Rook—Annie had stolen bore these false identities and their likenesses sans petechial hemorrhaging, he was nearly passed out on the floor of an elevator mechanical room floor and his McDonald’s was in a bucket. It wouldn’t have been so difficult, but he was still exhausted from the day before. 

“Next time,” he whispered from her lap, behind the arm thrown over his eyes. “Next time, I’d like to just go to prison in Russia, please. I don’t want to do that again.” 

Annie’s fingers gently carded through his hair. “You’re done, you’re done, I promise. That’s it, that’s the last time,” she promised, and they both knew it was probably a lie. 

“Will you be alright if I go buy tickets? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Ben thought about this for a moment, thought about being Ben Cohen. It would be real in a way even he couldn’t manage when someone else called him that, saw his picture next to that name and took it as gospel. Something stirred in his stomach that had nothing to do with the persistent nausea. Before he could decide whether the feeling was anxiety or anticipation, Ben pushed it out of his mind. “I’ll be fine,” he reached blindly for his bottle of water, took a minute sip, and added as an afterthought, “Annie.” He should get used to that. 

Hands carefully lowered his head to her bunched up parka and shoes scuffed slightly on the laminated floor. “Oh, I’ve just realized!” Faux leather crinkled and a metal clasp popped open. “We can use the iPad, can’t we? Might as well; we’ll be using their money, too.” 

“iPad? It’s ip-ad.” 

“Don’t be silly, ev-Ben, that sounds stupid.” 

“Not as stupid as iPad. And I think I would know better than you.” It was disconcerting to know she was using a computer but not hear the clacking of keys or the whir of a modem. “Why is it taking so long? Do I have to do this, too? Give it here,” he held out an impatient hand. 

“Shut up, like you would be any faster. Or have you stopped seeing double? I’m deciding where we should go. Chicago?”

Would it be the same as he remembered? “No, and not Seattle, either. Where do you want to go?” 

“This is my third time, you can pick. But hurry up; the Edmondsons might stop looking for their lost things and cancel their cards.” 

“Okay, Iowa.”

“What, why?” she demanded. “Iowa, are you crazy?” 

“You said I could pick.” 

“You don’t want to go there, I know you don’t. You’re winding me up. I’m taking back your election privileges. We’ll go to…Texas. Oh, don’t you make faces,” she poked his armpit in retaliation. “Either make a choice or I’m going to.”

“We could see the Grand Canyon. …That’s in Arizona.”

“I _know_ where it—” Her indignant glare was no less enjoyable for not being visible. “I’m going to sit in first class and put you in coach.” No, she wouldn’t. 

Cautiously, Ben uncovered his face and eased his eyes open. Annie must have turned out the light at some point, because it was dark except for the illumination from the handheld computer’s screen. 

“Okay, our flight leaves in four hours. We have a layover in New York, and we’ll be in Phoenix tomorrow morning. Sound good?”

“Yeah, cool. Can we go somewhere else to wait? It’s starting to smell.” 

Her eyes flicked to the bucket of his vomit. “I thought you’d never ask.”

She supported him the few steps out of the closet, depositing him carefully into a chair and pressing the snatched purse into his hands. “Your eyes are really bloody,” Anna murmured, crouched before him. “You can see, right? Good. Because it’s a little bit awesome,” she admitted. 

“Only you, ev-Anna.”

“You love it. I’m going to get you some more food.” Annie ignored his shaking head, “You need to get your strength back. Anything sound good? Sandwich? Pizza?” He retched and she jumped out of the way. “I’ll just use my best judgment, then. I’ll be back, _dongsaeng_ , don’t go anywhere.”

He gave her a weak thumbs-up. After she had disappeared around the corner, Ben realized she had left the stolen credit cards behind. No matter; taking without being seen had always been Rook’s specialty. Now it was Annie’s specialty. 

XXX

A man with a blocky sort of head and an air of easy amiability met the personnel carrier at the airfield, and told them he was called Happy. Bruce thought the name suited him well. Though Sitwell seemed less than pleased about it, he released Bruce and Dr. Foster into the custody of Tony’s chauffer without objection. Happy smiled at Jane and offered to take her suitcase; to Bruce’s surprise, Happy also picked up his bag. Unlike the SHIELD pilot and agents who accompanied them during the long transatlantic flight, Happy was quite willing to keep up a stream of small talk on the walk back to the surprisingly understated black Mercedes awaiting them. 

“Wait, wait!” A young agent hurried toward them, tie flapping frantically over his shoulder. “Don’t leave her here,” he nearly begged, pointing to a young woman struggling to drag an uncooperative rolling case across the tarmac.

“Darcy!” Jane cried in equal parts delight and exasperation. 

Darcy handed off all of her things to the extremely helpful Happy and raced to Dr. Foster without a backwards glance. They embraced like sisters.

“Jane! I hope your flight was better than mine, there was this horrible man who wanted to _talk_ to me. I would have Tasered him – just a little one, I promise, he wouldn’t even have peed himself – but they made me put Thor in my checked bag. And there was no Diet Coke. Jane, they tried to give me Pepsi products.” Darcy held Jane at arm’s length and repeated this crime dramatically, “ _Pepsi_ , for Odin’s sake.” 

Jane blinked, “Did you name your Taser after my boyfriend?” 

But Darcy had noticed Bruce and turned her formidable attentions to him instead of answering. “Who are you? You’re kind of cute, in an ABC Family professor dad kind of way. You aren’t another G-man, are you?” She cast a bruising glare at the agent who had waylaid them, now trying to slink away as quickly as possible, and Bruce wondered that the man hadn’t had a nervous breakdown. He doubted that anyone Darcy Lewis disliked lasted very long. “No,” she had decided, “you’re wearing a color, I think SHIELD must have a rule against that, along with everything else—hey!”

“I’m sorry!” Jane tugged Darcy a few steps away from Bruce, the blush blooming in her cheeks just visible in the security lights. “This is my—well, my former graduate assistant, Darcy Lewis.”

“Hi!” Darcy wiggled her fingers in greeting.

“Uh, nice to meet you,” Bruce managed to get out. He was thankful that Jane was holding Darcy back, far enough away that his failure to offer a handshake was forgivable. 

“This is Dr. Bruce Banner,” Jane told Darcy. When Darcy showed no flicker of recognition, Jane looked scandalized. “ _Dr. Banner_ ,” she repeated significantly, “the nuclear physicist. The most brilliant man of the modern age. Possibly the greatest scientific mind in human history. Nothing? No bells?”

Darcy patted Jane’s arm benevolently. “Oh, Jane,” she sighed. “You could have mentioned him a thousand times, but I tune out your science monologues. If you wanted me to pay attention, you should have showed me a picture. I’m always willing to talk about cute guys.” 

Bruce was feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the conversation, and beginning to dread sharing a car with Darcy for any length of time. The young agent’s relief at relinquishing responsibility for Ms. Lewis was now completely understandable. Dr. Foster appeared equally mortified at Darcy’s frankness, and hurriedly shepherded her into the back seat. Happy Hogan, however, closed the boot with a conspiratorial wink in Bruce’s direction. Of course, he did work for Tony Stark, so Bruce was not terribly shocked. 

Luckily, Jane kept Darcy focused on other topics during the ride into the city, the affectionate chatter of their reunion weaving a soothing harmony with the purr of the engine and the muffled hum of the road. Bruce allowed himself to close his eyes momentarily. 

He awoke with a restrained start when the clunk of the closing trunk lid echoed in an underground garage. Tony must have told Happy what Bruce sometimes became; nobody had tried to wake him. Fumbling with his seatbelt, Bruce tried to rejoin the others as unobtrusively as possible. Jet lag and the lateness of the hour were catching up with them, and the ride up to the residential floors of the Tower was silent. 

Everybody had stayed up to wait for them. With typical recklessness, Tony launched himself at Bruce and planted overly familiar kisses on his cheeks. Steve accompanied his firm handshake with an apologetic grimace, as though anyone expected him to excise control over Tony’s antics. Clint clapped him on the shoulder and, in the name of a petty game of usurpation, gave him a loud, sloppy kiss; if Bruce had realized what was coming a moment later, it would have been much more intimate. Even Natasha gave him a comradely sort of nod as she simultaneously shook Dr. Foster’s hand and cuffed Clint about the head. It was a loud, confusing jumble of introductions, hasty recounts of months spent apart, and, much to Happy’s chagrin, fruitless attempts to make sense of sleeping arrangements. 

Bruce tried in vain to suppress the tantalizing impression of a family welcoming him back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, seven chapters in, the gang's all here! (Except for Thor.) (I promise he's coming, and Loki, but it'll be a while. At least three more chapters.)


	8. Chapter 8

Strange things first started happening around Kristoffer Ibsen when he was nine. The earliest incident he could remember was a rainy day in October when Ms. Bennett handed back his first failing test grade. He couldn’t swallow the peanut butter sandwich in his plastic lunchbox. During recess in the gymnasium, Kris sat alone, clutching a rubber ball like a lifeline and trying not to cry. Nearly fifteen years later, he couldn’t remember what the test had been over but the smothering sense of failure was all too present in his memories. 

The bus ride home was horrible. The questions he had answered incorrectly, he knew them all! They raced through his mind, taunting him—how could he have been so stupid? What had caused him to circle the wrong choices, so blatantly incorrect? A monstrous headache threw the world into sharp contrast, like the migraines that sometimes drove his mother to bed in the middle of the day. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the ghastly 67 circled in orange ink at the top of his test. Stupid, stupid! Britta whimpered and tried to pull her fingers from her brother’s crushing grip.

An intense child – that was how Kris’s mother described him.

Kris remembered dragging Britta along faster than she could easily walk, passive aggressively lashing out against the one being under his control. His migraine had faded abruptly to a dull ache at the base of his skull, and the hours of anxiety had left him exhausted. He still had to get a parent’s signature, the proof that everyone knew that Kris was totally inadequate. Get it over with, he decided, and then he would sleep. 

When he pulled the paper out of his binder, his mother made fun of him. “This is wonderful, Kristoff!” she ruffled his hair. “I’ll put this on the fridge so your father will see when he comes home. We’ll have to celebrate! Put away your coat and we’ll have cookies for snack.” Kris was speechless, eyes dried by the shock of his mother abruptly become capricious. 

Except the paper she stuck to the refrigerator door with a picture magnet was wrong. It was graded in the same orange ink, but the number was 97.

He had somehow brought home someone else’s—no, that was his name. 

He had pulled out the wrong—no, those were the same questions he had pored over all day. 

His teacher had looked puzzled. “I’m sorry, Kris, I must have made a mistake.” She flipped through the pages, no doubt looking for erasure marks, and finding none. “I…Somehow I have you down with the wrong grade in my book. I’ll just fix that…” Looking back, Kris wondered that she didn’t think it odd to be handed back a test that no longer required a signature.

By the time he turned eleven, he could summon the ability at will and rarely got headaches. Nobody else knew, and Kris was not about to tell anyone; a girl from his class left and never came back. Mrs. Keele had pursed her lips and told them that Lydia’s family had moved away, now return your attention to the Oregon Trail, please. The day before, Lydia had been amusing her friends by playing fetch with wild birds.

At fourteen, Kris tried to change his name. He had always thought Britta had it worse off, but it turned out her name was exotic and his was simply strange. All he wanted was a more Anglicanized spelling of Kristoffer, but it proved beyond his ability. Between the strain that burst two blood vessels in his left eye and the vomiting, Kris landed himself in the hospital with a hernia. It must have been too ambitious to try to change the spelling on every piece of paper that controlled his identity, not to mention retroactively changing his parents’ minds about naming their firstborn. His family reacted to the revelation about as well as he could have expected. “Oh, Kristoff,” his mother had sighed, stroking his hair. “I knew there was something…different about you.” 

“She thought you were a poof,” Britta confided offhandedly. “But you’ve used up your newsflash for the year, so save that one for prom, okay?” 

Legislation mandating the registration of mutants failed in the House the year Kris graduated high school. His father summoned them all to the kitchen table and made Kris a solemn promise, that none of them would ever turn him in, no matter what the law might ever say. It was touching, but it didn’t make him feel any safer. The vague intuition to conceal himself flared into a near crippling fear of discovery.

Britta came into his room close to midnight and clung to him. She had told her boyfriend and her best friend, but neither would never tell anyone else, I promise they won’t, trust me, Kris. He had comforted her with a sinking feeling in his stomach. At least college was far away from everyone who could out him. 

His sophomore year at the University of Chicago, they came out with a so-called cure. Although he understood why some might do anything to blend in, Kris did not stand in line, but neither did he stand with the militia that marched on Alcatraz. 

It became clear soon afterward that the effects of the ‘cure’ were temporary, and the government changed tack abruptly. Mutants were picking sides all around, and ROTCs across the country began actively recruiting what they termed the ‘extrahumanly abled.’ Everyone was looking for the ultimate weapon, and Kris could will anything material into or out of being. The last resort escape plan he had sketched out in a particularly hopeless mood soon consumed his late-night thoughts.

The arrival of a man whose appearance screamed federal agent nearly sent Kris into a panic attack. As nonchalantly as he could, he packed up his books and left, breaking into a run the moment he was out of the library. Pressed against the wall of the student union building, wondering whether it was safe to go back to his apartment, Kris peeked around the corner. When he looked back, a young woman had materialized before him. 

She was persistent, and weaseled the truth out of Kris. When he confided his theory to her, an idea beginning to take shape in his mind, she interrupted and gripping his wrist, she whispered in his ear the most fantastic things he had ever heard. It would work, she swore intently, because it had before. 

Kris sent his sister a letter, gripped the ring he wore around his neck like a talisman, and woke up in Russia, for all intents and purposes fourteen years in the future. 

XXX

Arizona, they decided, was nice to visit, but not a place they wanted to settle. They rented a car and drove north. 

“You know, at some point,” Annie mentioned blithely, flicking a drop of condensation from her beer bottle as they stargazed from the hood of the car in Utah. “Sometime in the not too distant future, we’re going to have to stop stealing credit cards and get real jobs.” 

“Sure,” Ben perfunctorily agreed. Soon.

XXX

“JARVIS!” 

“It really isn’t necessary to shout, Ms. Lewis.”

“I know,” Darcy inspected her nails unconcernedly, “but it makes me feel like a _Downton Abbey_ character, shouting for the servants.” She frowned slightly, “Is that offensive? Is there a PC term for computer servants?” 

“I don’t think you’ve ever actually seen _Downton Abbey_. Was there something you wanted, Ms. Lewis?” 

“Why isn’t the elevator working?” 

“There is nothing wrong with the elevator.” 

That was funny, because the little button wouldn’t stay lit when she pushed the down arrow. Just to be sure, Darcy poked it again, and then again.

“Ms. Lewis…” 

“Why isn’t it coming? If it’s working—Wait!” Darcy narrowed her eyes at the ceiling. “Are you keeping it from coming? JARVIS! I’m hurt! I thought we were friends!” She sniffed and hunched her shoulders very convincingly.

“Ms. Lewis, in addition to your moments, I can monitor your heart rate, breathing, and body temperature with the greatest of ease,” JARVIS said crisply. “Your crocodile tears do not impress me.” 

“Yeah, well, good! Because I didn’t even mean them!” Darcy flapped her hands agitatedly. “Why aren’t I allowed to use the elevator anymore? What did I do to you? I’ve barely spoken to you. Are you saying I need to exercise? Is that what you’re doing, JARVIS? That is incredibly rude, not to mention really weird for a guy who doesn’t even have a body. You know, you’re lucky you don’t have a body, because otherwise I would Tase the shit out of you. How does a computer even have a conception of beauty, anyway! How dare you call me fat!”

“I did no—” JARVIS began indignantly, but Darcy was in full rant mode and didn’t hear him. 

“You know what? Fuck you, and your ridiculous standards of attractiveness! News flash! There are all kinds of bodies, and they are all real women, thank you very much. I’m never going to look like a runway model, and I am totally okay with that. I am happy with the way that I look, and there are at least three men and two women who are also very happy with my figure! And I am an amazing person! I am charming and witty and I am a fucking joy to be around! You wish you could date me! I was hoping that you and me would have this tragic, chaste romance that consisted in us watching movies and talking about the Avengers behind their backs and wishing you had a body that I could rub up against while you whispered sweet British nothings in my ear, but _clearly_ that’s not going to happen now, because you are a jerk hole!” Darcy took a deep, shuddering breath. “And another thing!” 

XXX

“Yeah, see, I don’t think that would be the best use of my time, what with the end of the quarter coming up and the board expecting me to come up with something brilliant again. Plus, I’m working on that thing for your new friend Fury. And there’s also that other project I’m doing, the really—for Rhodey. Did you hear that?” Tony cocked his head to the side. “There was this, this thing, I don’t know—oh, look!” The elevator doors opened and he scuttled inside, slapping randomly at the touchscreen in a futile attempt to escape Pepper. 

“Tony,” she warned, doggedly following him. “You can’t run away from this. You told—Tony!” She slapped his hand away from the control panel and glared. “This has been on the schedule for almost four months, and you are going.”

“It’s been on _the_ schedule, not my schedule,” Tony avidly avoided meeting Pepper’s gaze. “It’s a subtle but crucial distinction and I’m surprised you haven’t picked up on it yet. How long have you worked for me?”

Undeterred, Pepper steamrolled on, “I put you down for the sea bass. Will you be bringing a date?” 

“I’m going to say yes, but it’s a moot point because I. Am not. Go…what the…?” he wondered as the doors separated on the strangest sight Tony had seen in at least a week.

“—and no, I haven’t actually seen _Downton Abbey_! I’ve been meaning to see it but I got caught up with watching all the seasons of _Buffy_ …again. Shut up, it’s a great show!” the young woman he recognized as the astrophysicist’s assistant defiantly threw her braid over her shoulder. Not the least disheartened by it swinging all the way around to her other side, she planted her hands on her hips like she had every intention of continuing her tirade.

“Hey!”

“What?” she snapped, and turned to face Tony.

“Are you shouting at JARVIS?”

Unintimidated, she jerked her chin up and narrowed her eyes aggressively, “Yeah, I was, because your house is a misogynist. Was it you that programmed him to think girls like me are fat?” 

“What? I didn’t—I will have you know that I have slept with—JARVIS!” It wasn’t strictly necessary to turn in any direction to address JARVIS, but Tony recognized that look on the girl’s face as a harbinger of doom. 

“Sir, Ms. Lewis misunderstood—”

“Misunderstood, my butt!” Darcy stabbed an accusatory finger at the ceiling, “He won’t let me call the elevator! I was going to go downstairs for another one of those fun meetings and he’s trying to make me take the stairs!”

“What?” Tony repeated, insulted now. “JARVIS can’t do that. Well, he can, but he won’t, not without my say-so. And I do not think you’re fat!” he added hastily when Darcy rounded on him again. 

“Okay, that’s enough.” Pepper didn’t raise her voice, but the delivery petrified them both. “Tony, would you excuse us for a moment?” They held a brief, silent conversation that ended with Tony huffily stalking a few meters away. “Right, Ms. Lewis,” Pepper turned on her with a bland smile. “I told JARVIS not to let you take the elevator downstairs as you did crash an important testing session the other day.” She paused delicately, “And I do mean ‘crash’ rather literally in this case. I assure you that I only intended to encourage you to stay in the residential portion of the Tower. I’m surprised JARVIS didn’t mention the reason your elevator privileges had been restricted.” 

“Ms. Lewis wouldn’t listen,” JARVIS offered in a tone that could only be described as sulky. “I was beginning to think that she wasn’t ever going to stop.” 

“What did she do?” Tony asked curiously from the sidelines. “What did she crash? How long were you arguing with my AI?”

“She snuck into the testing session of the TI-332.M and convinced it to rip out its own CPU.” 

“The lady in the scientist coat told us to test its limits of process…something! Now you know that TIM has the same weakness as that evil robot in _The Incredibles_. You’re welcome!” 

“Almost six minutes, sir. Your record remains standing.” 

“Still impressive.” A grin stretched Tony’s face. “I want her.” Both women’s jaws dropped. “Not like that! Come on, I’m offended, I’m not a monster. Anymore. Right now. I still don’t have an assistant, and you’re really busy all the time now—”

“No.”

“—and it’ll keep her out of the company levels! It’s a match made in heaven!” 

“No!” Pepper strode toward him like she meant to physically restrain him. That was overdoing it, because Tony wasn’t even moving. 

“Hey, girl! I don’t remember your name, it’s going to happen. Want to be my assistant?” He shot Darcy his most winning smile, and then quickly recalibrated to be less sexually magnetic. 

“Ignore him,” Pepper insisted, attempting to conceal Tony with her body. “He’s trying to punish me. Don’t pretend that’s not what this is!” she hissed at him, bobbing over her shoulder. “I’m not going to stand by and just—I don’t want to deal with another external sexual harassment lawsuit!”

“It’s not like that, Pep, I told you. And I get so few of those anymore. Seriously, I have no desire to sleep with her. No offense,” he apologized to Darcy, who was watching them with blatant fascination. “Honestly, I think the term ‘hourglass’ was coined just to describe your body, and your breasts are amazing. I don’t motorboat as a rule, but I want to bury my face in your cleavage.” Tony’s brain caught up with his mouth and he realized how this was sounding, wonderfully illustrated by Pepper’s long-suffering grimace. “But I won’t! Promise. Scout’s honor.” He raised a three-fingered salute as proof of his sincerity.

“Yeah,” Darcy said slowly, “I don’t think you were a Boy Scout.” 

“And you would be wrong!” Tony stepped out from behind Pepper, “I was a Boy Scout for about forty-seven minutes. I got expelled for inappropriate language and attempting a coup. The scout master was a tyrant and I was acting on behalf of the people.” He laid a hand earnestly over his heart in his best Captain America impression.

“Ms. Lewis,” Pepper made another valiant go of regaining control of the situation. “I am so sorry about this. Mr. Stark is—”

“Why are you apologizing for me? What did I do wrong?” Tony demanded. “We’re just talking about my childhood. You were always trying to get me to go to a therapist and talk about this shit and here, I’m doing it by choice. I can’t win.” 

Pepper had recovered enough from the surreal turn of events to restore her frightening enforced calm. “Tony, we’re going to have a long talk about this later that you will not enjoy. JARVIS, will you take Ms. Lewis upstairs to Dr. Foster?” 

“Stay,” Tony countermanded. “She’s not your employee, you can’t tell her where to go. Darcy—is your name Darcy? It is? Jesus, this has to be a first. I would be honored if you would be my personal assistant, so would you make me a very, very happy boss?” 

“She’s already Dr. Foster’s assistant.” Pepper gave Darcy a pointed look as she continued to address Tony, “She hasn’t got time to fetch you coffee, has she?” 

“She’s not upstairs now, so she clearly has some time. And I spend most of my day with Dr. Foster when you’re not bugging me with ridiculous anniversary parties that I’m not—I’ve got it; how about this,” Tony changed tacks quickly. “You let me have Darcy, and I’ll go to the thing. No complaints, I’ll be there on time—reasonably close to on time,” he amended, “and I’ll make my greatest effort to not make any scenes. C’mon, me and Darcy will have fun, won’t we?” 

Pepper’s business and personal consciences warred, but Darcy was legally of age. She sighed, knowing she was defeated. “Does she even want to work for you?” 

Tony turned to Darcy expectantly and Pepper followed suit.

“Is there a dress code?” 

Tony snorted and gestured to his trainers and Clash t-shirt. 

“I’m going to talk at you a lot, and I’ll expect you to pretend to listen.” 

“I’ve been pretending to listen to people my whole life,” Tony assured her. “You won’t even be able to tell the difference.”

“If you get me up in the middle of the night for any reason, you have to provide coffee and either Sour Patch Kids or Skittles.” 

“JARVIS, order those in bulk. Anything else?” 

Darcy’s blustering bravado faded slightly when she asked, “Why me?” 

“You shouted at JARVIS. You were going to shout at me. I need people who aren’t intimidated by the fact that I’m a genius and rich and ruggedly handsome.” Pepper groaned aloud, and her eye roll was equally audible. 

Pursing her lips, Darcy considered Tony critically. “Not quite handsome. Sexy, I’ll give you, in a weird, mechanic with suspicious associations and amounts of money sort of way, but not handsome.” 

“I have no problem settling for sexy,” Tony replied seriously, and then grinned puckishly. “We're gonna have fun together.” 

Darcy returned his wicked grin. “If you can handle it. Want to be best friends?”

Tony inhaled through his teeth, uncertain. “You’re going to have to go up against Rhodey for that title, but I’d bet on you because Rhodey won’t hit a girl and even he will be distracted by your spectacular rack. Sorry, that was the last one. I’m trying to keep Pepper’s New Year’s resolution about sexual harassment lawsuits.” 

“I don’t mind compliments, just no grabbing or slobbering. You will taste the thunder.” 

“I have no idea what that—I don’t slobber, I have never slobbered. But deal.” They shook hands, and it felt like a pact to blow up Parliament.

Pepper appeared determined not to blink in case this was a game of chicken. Her smile was brittle. “Friday, Tony. Nine. Don’t forget.” 

“Uh, my assistant handles my schedule,” Tony shoved Darcy toward Pepper with a saccharine smirk. “Talk to her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish Darcy had been in _The Avengers_ ; I have no doubt this _exact_ scene would have occurred, and it would have been fabulous. I haven't decided yet if that little bit about blowing up Parliament is hyperbole or foreshadowing. I mean, let's face it: it is a distinct possibility with these two.


	9. Chapter 9

If Natasha had to pick a place to be for extended periods of time, she would not choose the Tower. It was an ostentatious building, and ostentatious was expedient in very few situations. Housing a cadre of exceptional individuals that formed the first bulwark against extraordinary threats to global peace was not such a situation. There were distressingly few options for tactical retreat at that height. 

SHIELD’s offices were better by a narrow margin. Deputy Director Hill had managed to find an unassuming building large enough to house most of the regular personnel while the Helicarrier was in an officially nonexistent shipyard for repairs, but it had been a move of necessity rather than calculation. There were no attached barracks, and the apartments SHIELD had appropriated were several blocks away and spread throughout three different complexes. Inside the headquarters felt like a pedestrian government bureaucracy made bleaker by the absence of the usual benign art and potted plants. It was a stagnant place, and for all that it was strategically better for a violent confrontation, Natasha stayed only as long as was required. 

Few locations met Natasha’s tactical expectations, but the Tower was lower than most on favorable attributes. Regardless, whenever Natasha was not on assignment or made to be at headquarters, she found herself in the Tower. It was not consideration for returning the cars she borrowed without asking that brought her back over and over again, either. Clint was there, the closest thing Natasha had to friend or family. Tony was there, predictably wandering around at odd hours with his hair on end, trading barbs with Clint and JARVIS by turns. Steve was there, politely bewildered and delighted by simple things like family size bags of chips and always amenable to sparring. Bruce was there now, and it raised her hackles but it was good that Tony was speaking at regular intervals with someone other than JARVIS.

Natasha was not an instinctive team player, but she recognized that they kept each other’s company better than they each would with ordinary people. 

The elevator took her to the top floors automatically: JARVIS, always anticipating. He had the good sense not to worry over the bloody hatchet she was carrying, and Natasha didn’t need to be reminded to not drip on the floors. Nobody was around, but it was just after four. Steve and Clint would be running themselves to the ground in the spacious, well-equipped training pitches, and Tony, Bruce, and Dr. Foster would be peering intently at various screens in the lab. 

Natasha kicked off her heels and padded to her room with the intention of washing the remnants of a satisfyingly successful op out of her hair. The hatchet laid on the bureau to await cleaning, Natasha shed her clothes and stepped beneath the water. Typical Stark, to make even the showers extravagant. If she was a different woman, Natasha would have luxuriated in the perfumed steam and massaging jets. 

Ten minutes later, she wrapped herself in a towel and eyed herself in the mirror. Flawless as ever, and it gave her no joy. Why was Steve so expressive? Natasha had always thought that it was a side effect of the serum to have a narrowed emotional field. At least eighty per cent of the mistakes she saw other people make were rooted in sentimentality, and the serum was meant to eliminate errors, make the human mind like a supercomputer. It stood to reason, and reason was something at which Natasha Romanov excelled.

And yet Steve could weep with his friend. Steve could have a friend. If she was a different woman, Natasha would have been frustrated and perhaps envious. She was merely puzzled. 

Just to prove she could, Natasha forced herself to cry. One perfect tear fell from her clumped lashes. Contracted brows, the barest hint of red rimming her eyes, attractively quivering lower lip—she could have anyone putting a reassuring arm about her shoulders, gently tipping her chin up to offer her soothing words. It was a sham, a con. Smiles and tears; smoke and mirrors. She was the best. Maybe Steve was better.

Maybe Steve’s whole persona was an act. Natasha had been deep undercover before; she knew what it was to never slip up for months on end. Surely Steve was just like her, under that bashful Forties veneer. Why was he hiding? Should Natasha have done? Did he see something she hadn’t, or couldn’t? Not likely. But it was possible. 

It was possible they were different because of the Red Room.

Letting out a breath that was not quite a sigh, Natasha smoothed her face into the blank mask. Neutral, in every sense of the word. She was not like Steve.

“JARVIS.”

“Miss Romanova.”

They were alike, she and JARVIS. Cool, unperturbed, responding automatically to stimuli to optimize the outcome. Steve was supposed to be like them, and he was not, or he acted like he was not. There was no difference, in the end. He was like Clint, extremely capable but concealing a seething core of volubility. Weakness, but only let out in the off hours. She had long since accepted that as a deficiency that had to be endured in others. It was manipulable, and she was _the_ manipulator. 

“Nothing happened while I was away?”

The AI hesitated for nearly a whole second before confirming, “Nothing of import, no.” 

Natasha cocked her head to the side; habit. JARVIS would note the movement, but it would not affect how he responded to her inquiries. His code was immutable. It was…beautiful. “Debrief, zero-hours to the present,” she ordered. 

“My daily data intake is measured in terabytes. Please limit the query.”

Natasha dropped the towel and began dressing, her movements precise as a machine, graceful as a dancer. “Notable interactions.” 

“You flatter me, that you would trust my definition of ‘notable.’ Miss Potts had a heated disagreement with Sir over an engagement at the end of the week. Sir agreed to attend in exchange for having Darcy Lewis as his personal assistant. I do not understand his insistence on this point in the slightest,” JARVIS sniffed.

It was a strange request. Possibly sexual, possibly vindictive. Most probably ridiculous for the sake of ridiculousness. If Tony Stark put even half the energy he did into maintaining his reputation for eccentricity into something practical, Natasha mused. 

“Ms. Lewis caused a scene regarding myself,” JARVIS continued after another, wholly inexplicable pause of two seconds. “She made unsavory accusations about my attitudes toward women.” 

Natasha raised a brow as she combed her hair, but did not interject. Inexplicable, unless the pauses were themselves the message.

“Captain Rogers had to order Agent Barton off the shooting range shortly before you arrived, and Agent Barton responded as could be expected. There were no further notable interactions today.” A beat of silence, and then, “I would like to assure you, Miss Romanova, that Ms. Lewis’s allegations are baseless.”

There it was, confirmed. She turned on the hair dryer and did not bother to raise her voice over the drone. “I was not concerned.”

JARVIS, at least, let a conversation end when there was no more information to exchange.

XXX

The future was a dismal disappointment. Kris had been beaten up three times, and Ben seemed to have inherited the target on his back. No matter the reality, he remained persona non grata. No sooner had the blood in his eyes faded to a hint of jaundiced yellow and some asshole took it upon himself to replace it with a shiner. 

Annie brought him a bottle of hydrogen peroxide that stung as he dabbed it at the scrapes on his temple. If his eyes pricked a little, that was the reason. 

“Promise me you won’t change your hair,” Annie implored. “I love your hair.” 

He smiled humorlessly, “Women do, yeah.” 

“You’re not mad that I hit that guy, are you?” 

“Are you kidding?” he looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror incredulously. “Why would I be upset about you knocking out the guy hell-bent on caving in my skull?” 

“Some guys wouldn’t like to have a girl come to their defense.” 

“I’m not nearly that stupid.”

“Glad to hear it. Knew there was a reason I liked you.” She hopped up onto the counter and swung her feet childishly. “I wish we could go to the police.”

“What would we have told them?” Ben experimentally scrunched up his face and winced as the swelling contusion on his cheekbone twinged. “Last I checked, homophobia wasn’t a crime. Not a lot changes in fourteen years, I guess.” 

“Assault is still illegal, though, definitely.” She took the proffered damp towel spotted with rusty blooms of blood and folded it fastidiously. “I wish we didn’t have to be invisible. You know what I would do?”

“Something morally reprehensible?” Ben hazarded. 

“Depends on your moral framework,” she equivocated slyly.

He cocked an eyebrow, “I’m just talking about the law. What are you talking about?” She slid to the floor and only gently patted his cheek in reply. 

The next morning, Ben’s cheek from temple to jaw was mottled purple, and two of their stolen identities didn’t pass muster at the gas station. Annie’s face was a flinty mask as she threw them away. Down to one card, they exchanged a grim look; they needed to find a way to put their assumed identities aboveboard, and fast.

XXX

For the second time that day, Jane Foster left a smudge of dry erase marker across her cheek in the process of tucking her hair behind her ear. She didn’t appear to realize, and Bruce was not about to tell her. He did hope JARVIS would not be averse to showing Bruce her reaction when Dr. Foster finally saw her own reflection. Bruce bet himself that she would have a ponytail when they next saw each other. 

After nearly two days of looking at the data, Bruce and Jane had confidently seconded the SHIELD science department’s calling the strange energy signature Hawking radiation and confirmed it did not correlate with readings from the Bifrost. Jane had tried to conceal her relief when they had arrived at this conclusion, but it was understandable, to fear that someone felt less for you than you had thought. Other than it was some sort of black hole but not an Einstein-Rosen bridge, however, they had no real grasp of what had happened. 

“Would it be really bad to ask for another one?” Jane muttered, and then started when Bruce walked up next to her, like she had forgotten he was there. Or she was afraid. “I mean, making a black hole is not exactly child’s play, but that’s why we know so little about them. Because we haven’t had many to study.”

“Not to mention they are cataclysmically dangerous,” Bruce smiled at the irony of him calling anything dangerous. 

“The naturally occurring ones,” Jane agreed, frowning. “ But all kinds of physicists have theorized about generating stable black holes as interstellar portals. My thesis advisor, Michio Kaku, has been talking about applications like that for years, but the energy requirements are prohibitively astronomical.” 

“Don’t say anything like that around Tony; he’ll take it as a challenge.” 

“Challenge accepted!” Tony crowed from behind them. “What have I agreed to?”

“Don’t answer that, Dr. Foster, it’s—oh, no.” Bruce’s watch beeped once in warning. 

“Jane, you have Expo whiskers again. Why are you working on a white board? Tony Stark is bankrolling you! Live a little and use something innovated in this century. Hi, Bruce!” Darcy beamed at him as she licked a tissue for Dr. Foster. “How’s the science going?”

Oh, no. Jane had kept Darcy out of the lab the first day, apologizing a second time for Darcy’s behavior the night they met. She couldn’t be there. It was more than awkward, it was an invitation for destruction. 

“Good on you, getting rid of Pepper so quickly,” Tony praised her. “Don’t mind sharing, do you, Jane? I’ve already promised to keep my hands to myself.” Jane started to say something that Bruce was sure was more questioning what was happening than assent, but of course, Tony chose the interpretation that suited his purposes. “Good, we can work out a divided schedule later. Missed a spot,” he tapped his own cheek helpfully.

Darcy rolled her eyes and pulled a thoroughly befuddled Jane away. “I’m friends with Tony Stark now,” was how she explained it. “He doesn’t stare at my boobs. Bye, Bruce!” she called with an exaggerated wave over Jane’s sputters.

Carefully setting aside his SI tablet, Bruce clutched the edge of the table and prayed for calm. Obviously, Tony hadn’t known, but once it was all explained, there wouldn’t be a problem. Tony Stark was a great many things, but Bruce didn’t believe he was cavalier about the lives of innocent people. He opened his eyes to Tony’s curious scrutiny and arranged his expression to the firm solemnity he used with terminal patients. 

“Not good?” Tony guessed, and Bruce shook his head. This would be easier than— “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that. That’s like waving a red flag at a bull. Bad example, I know bulls are colorblind. You still haven’t told me what it is that I agreed to do when I walked in. Anyway, this is great!” He slung a conspiratorial arm around Bruce’s shoulders and gave him a salesman’s grin, “I bet you’ll be wanting to get away. How does LA sound? This Friday?”

XXX

The new headquarters was an unpleasant place. Like a social services office. It made Clint’s skin crawl and he walked as quickly as he could without attracting undue attention. What good little drones, not even taking the opportunity to pin him with incriminatory stares. Well, that was the real indictment, wasn’t it? They could do their jobs, and Clint had not. 

The thing about being a sniper was that it didn’t depend on anyone else. Hit the target or don’t hit the target – that was the extent of whether or not Clint was worthy. That was the way it had been for so long, when it just Clint looking out for himself and he was only a pawn. Then Natasha and Coulson had been on the board with him. It didn’t really matter which king they protected, or whose bishop Clint was told to assassinate, because he had comrades to whom he was more loyal. He was down to one, now.

If Loki ever returned to Earth, Clint would finally have a satisfying round of target practice. 

Fury locked eyes with Clint on approach to his office. Glass walls: a sniper’s wet dream. Clint would like to shake the hand of whoever had pioneered the floor to ceiling window. Hill moved to intercept him, but Fury stood and opened the door. She fixed him with a warning stare and stepped aside. 

“Director,” Clint nodded and stood at attention before Fury’s desk.

“Agent Barton,” Fury reclined in his chair and eyed Clint speculatively. “I take it this isn’t a social call.”

“Put me back in the field, sir.” Fury steepled his fingers and didn’t blink. Clint willed himself not to clench his fists. “Medical cleared me. My actions against the Chitauri—”

“I know you’re ready, Barton. I’m not ready.” Fury tilted his head to the side, “Believe it or not, it’s not about trust.”

Clint grinned viciously. “Of course not, sir. It’s my bow arm. Can’t seem to hit the same things I used to.” 

“If that was true, I’d never hear about it.” Fury leaned forward, taking Clint into his confidence. “I need you in reserve for an upcoming op.”

“Sir?” Clint asked doubtfully. 

“We’re tracking a pair of operatives in connection with Chelyabinsk. Last known position was Colorado. When we have a real-time location, I’ll ask Captain Rogers to lead a strike team to bring them into custody, but he’ll refuse. He’ll want to go in alone but you will volunteer to go with him. If Captain Rogers tries to turn down your aid, you need to persuade him otherwise. You will remain in radio contact with Deputy Director Hill or myself. Do we understand each other, Barton?” Fury’s eye pinned Clint in place, holding him until Fury got the answer he wanted.

Clint was a pawn. Watch the Knight, the King commanded. “Yes, sir, Director.” 

XXX

“Captain Rogers,” JARVIS’s plummy voice jarred Steve out of the numbing rhythm of his punches. “You wanted to know when Sir and Dr. Banner were alone. I think Ms. Lewis will have Dr. Foster occupied for some time.” 

Steve caught the punching bag to still its oscillations. “And Agents Barton and Romanov?”

“Agent Barton is away from the Tower, and Miss Romanova is otherwise occupied. If you mean to avoid them, I would suggest taking the fire stairs rather than the elevator.”

“Thanks, JARVIS.” If he did not acknowledge the note of disapproval, he did not need to explain himself.

Upstairs, Tony and Bruce were shoulder to shoulder over a colorful graphic that made no sense to Steve. Their closeness disturbed him, in part because Bruce could be unstable.

“…estimate of the mass of the evaporation,” Bruce murmured, flicking his middle finger across the screen so the sunburst of reds and yellows became animated, flaring and then deteriorating and shrinking to a bluish bloom that shriveled into nothing. “Dr. Foster’s equation—” he broke off with a smile when Tony shot the white board covered in indecipherable scrawls a glower. “A hundred and thirty kilos, give or take a dozen.” 

“Disgusting,” Tony declared. “JARVIS, digitize all that stuff. Who said she could have that? If anybody sees that in my lab, I’ll die of mortification. One-thirty, huh?” 

“Under the current assumptions about black body radiation,” Bruce nodded. He caught sight of Steve and shifted away from Tony. “Captain.” 

“Steve!” Tony jerked around and grinned; it left his eyes untouched. “Come to tell me how amazing I am again? Go on, I never get tired of hearing it. How’s Sugar-Ray?”

“I was using a bag.”

Tony looked stricken. “What’s wrong with my bot?” he demanded. 

“Nothing, Tony, I just wanted… It’s not important. We need to talk.” 

“We’re listening,” Bruce took off his glasses and leaned against the tabletop. Tony mimicked the posture, but then crossed his arms and legs restlessly.

“This meteoroid,” Steve began— 

“The meteoroid is inconsequential,” Tony jumped in, jiggling one foot absently. “Thirty nuclear bombs sounds like a lot, but it isn’t enough to generate a black hole, not even a tiny one.”

“He’s right. The meteor was probably just a flash-bang, a bit of sleight of hand to distract the audience from the real trick.”

“That’s just it,” Steve bleakly asserted. “How powerful must this guy be for an explosion of that magnitude to be the birdie to keep our attention off his work? What happens when we find him? I’m not talking about neutralization, either,” he added dourly. “Until he becomes a threat, powerful people are going to be courting him.”

“You think Fury will be at the head of the line,” Bruce anticipated quietly.

Tony snorted contemptuously. “After he cuts the heads off of all the other suitors. Fury is a romantic at heart, after all.” 

“And he’s hardly the worst I can imagine. Fury won’t risk an assault until he has to. I think he’ll send one of us to make the first overture, probably me or Natasha.” It was a testament to the seriousness of the conversation that Tony did not feign offense at being left out of the running. “If he gets his hands on this guy, you know it’s going to end in weapons, just like with the Tesseract.” 

“What was it Thor said?” Bruce asked his own hands. “Inviting ‘a higher form of war.’”

Tony had stilled and he gazed steadily at Steve. “You mean to get through the door first. Keep him out of Fury’s hands, and everyone else’s, too.” Steve nodded in affirmation. Tony scratched his goatee and offered, “You’ll need a secure location. I can keep the stormtroopers out, but Fury’s going to lose his shit when he finds out. When,” Tony repeated significantly, “not if.” 

“I know,” Steve sighed. “Either this guy’ll be on our side, or he won’t. I won’t pass him off into the wrong hands.”

Bruce flinched slightly at this grim pronouncement, but he seemed resigned rather than rebellious. “Why are you bringing us in? Fury will be the one to tell you where to find him.”

Steve would have delayed this longer, but both Bruce and Tony would see through any half-truths. “I’ll need allies,” he made eye contact with them both, letting them see his reluctance. “If Romanov and Barton are more loyal to Fury than to this world.” 

And it pained him that neither could swear otherwise.


	10. Chapter 10

It had been the most cockamamie decision of Jane’s incredibly inept life to hire Darcy Lewis. Like her ineffable choice to help a possibly mentally deficient stranger get to a secure government facility that he intended to illegally enter, though, Jane could not bring herself to regret that decision. She could not forgive Darcy embarrassing her so thoroughly in front of _Bruce flipping Banner_ , either, but Jane had long since come to the realization that despairing at and loving Darcy were not mutually exclusive.

Oh, God, she was a parent. 

Her ersatz daughter brought her a sweating can of Diet Coke, wondering aloud whether she should praise Tony Stark for his taste in soda or for simply having everything under the sun at his beck and call. Both was apparently the correct answer. 

“You look like you’ve forgotten what you’re supposed to do with that,” Darcy observed with her usual bluntness. “You’re not still having kittens over a little marker on your face in front of the great Dr. Banner, are you?”

Jane slouched into Tony’s strangely uncomfortable L-shaped couch with a groan. “Don’t remind me!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Darcy advised, popping the tab on her soda and slurping at the fizz. “I do something mortifying in front of a cute guy at least once a week. They’re usually willing to let it go if they think there could be sex in the offing.” 

“Darcy!” Jane gaped. “I don’t want to sleep with him!”

“You don’t actually have to sleep with them, just make it clear that it’s not off the table. And why not? He’s totally bangable.”

Mouthing uselessly, Jane could come up with no response that did not either make one of her greatest idols into a sexual object or make her a liar. Giving up on enforcing some respect for the most brilliant man alive, she took a sip of her soda and tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Anyway, it’s not that. That was awful, but I was thinking about Thor. Not sex!” Dammit, she was blushing. “Just that he left and I haven’t seen him since.”

Darcy hummed sympathetically and nudged Jane’s leg with her foot in encouragement. That was the thing: you couldn’t help but talk to Darcy. 

“I was kind of hoping when Sitwell told me it was a black hole that he meant the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. It’s stupid, I know. I knew him for, what? Three days?” She laughed hollowly, “And I hit him with my van twice!” 

“Ah-ha!” Darcy cried triumphantly, nearly startling Jane into slopping Coke down her front.

“Jesus, Darcy!”

“Sorry,” Darcy apologized without remorse, “but you finally took responsibility for that first time, like you should. Continue,” she took an innocent sip and waved Jane on.

“I’ve been thinking of him as my boyfriend, but that’s dumb. We kissed once, and then he left for a completely different galaxy. I didn’t even get to see him when he came back to save the world.” The note of petulance in her voice was appalling. “He probably doesn’t even want to see me. He’s a god. Literally!” she shook her head wonderingly. “What have I got to offer him?” 

Darcy plucked the Diet Coke from Jane’s fingers, set both cans carefully on the coffee table, and then punched Jane in the bicep. 

“Ow! What was that for?”

“There are no pillows! Otherwise, I would have thrown one at you.” Darcy sat back on her branch of the couch and glared, “One, if I was not afraid of being disappeared by the Men in Black, I would be telling every person I met on the street that I had been in the same room a shirtless someone as hot as Thor. I’d call him my best friend—not now that Tony Stark is, obviously. Best guy friend, I mean; you’re my best girlfriend, you’re welcome—and he definitely was into you kissing him. I would be worried you had brain damage if you had sucked face with Thor and not proceeded to call him your boyfriend, even if it was delusional.

“Two, it is definitely not delusional. How many times have I told you, Jane? You are a unicorn,” Darcy declared, eyes blazing. “A fabulous, shiny-haired, crazy-smart unicorn who kicks serious ass. Luckily for him, Thor is smart enough to realize that. And even if he wasn’t, that’s his loss, because you are the bomb and I would Tase him again if he led you on.” 

Jane had no trouble believing Darcy would do exactly that. It was both worrisome and humbling, like leaving a child at an out-of-state college far more prestigious than the one from which you graduated. “Thanks,” she finally replied, “for taking away my drink before you hit me.” 

Darcy flicked condensation at her in retaliation, “It’s okay, I know I give the best pep talks. This is all just normal long-distance relationship nervousness and I’ll have to give that little speech a few more times until the magical rainbow bridge brings Thor back. In the meantime, let’s talk about _my_ man problems for a change. For real, Dr. Banner is—”

“No!” Jane frantically clapped her hands over her ears, “I have to work with him! La-la-la-la-la, not talking about this!”

XXX

Like the tragic majority of escapees, Ben had never given much thought to how to deal with the outside. The possible outcomes of their experiment that he had considered never included a world essentially the same as the one he had left. They had worn heavy clothing in case the world was cold, over light cotton in case it was warm, and brought protein bars, bottled water, rudimentary first aid kits, and hand-cranked flashlights. Annie also carried a sturdy, curved long knife that she thought was secret from Ben. What they had expected was a hardscrabble wilderness, not a digitized upgrade. 

The last book Ben had read was a survival handbook, and it had not covered how to gain American citizenship when one officially did not exist. The final solution was glaring, but Ben refused to acknowledge it. 

In South Dakota, they went hiking in the Black Hills. It was crisp, early March, and Ben wished he could enjoy it. Annie straining at bringing up the subject eclipsed the natural tranquility of the vast slate sky. The gravel crunching beneath their booted feet and their panting breath were the last defense against the inevitable discussion, the one he wished she would not start; he set an incessant, demanding pace.

The fork in the trail he had chosen ended in an overlook, a dead end. Annie went all the way to the edge of the precipice and surveyed the landscape of stones and trees, knowing he would not start back without her. “ev-Ben, I know you don’t want to do it again.” She was just barely audible over the sound of his heart and breath in his ears. “I hate that I have to ask it of you, I hope you know that. It is the only way.”

“It can’t be.”

“It is our only option,” she reiterated and turned to face him. Ben wondered if she felt the way she looked. It was impossible to tell with her. “All we need are social security numbers. After that—”

“No, you don’t even know what all we need.” Ben clenched his fists in his pockets, unable to meet her eyes. “Maybe before, back there, it would be enough, but I don’t know what kind of systems they use here, I don’t know what the programs look like. I couldn’t even make a minor change to an existing identity in the world I knew, and you want me to summon up two spotless histories in a more technologically advanced society?” 

“You were a child then. You’re so much more powerful now. You are,” she insisted over his bark of laughter, ignoring his shaking head. “You figured out what the problem was. You know what you need to visualize now, or you can find out.”

“No, I don’t know what the problem was!” Ben realized dimly he had begun shouting. “There’s not exactly an owner’s manual for mutants, is there? That’s why we ran, because people were afraid of what nobody understood. At least that’s why I ran; I don’t know why you did.”

“Kristoffer!” she gasped, incensed. 

“That’s not my name!” he spat at her. “If you were so keen to leave, why are you clinging to it, to the names we had there?” 

“I am not clinging to it.” She drew herself up haughtily, “You forget it was never my world. I have no particular love of it, but I do love you, and I cling to you. The real you, _dongsaeng_ , not this unexceptional pedestrian you want so desperately to be. The name is secondary, but it is all that remains of your true self. I only want that you shouldn’t forget who you are, and you are not like everyone else. Why do you not want to be yourself?”

Annie sounded as honest as she ever did, but it didn’t soften him. Eyes and ears were deceitful around her. Ben backed a few steps away, “It doesn’t feel like you love me, Annie; it feels like you love the accident that has imprisoned me my whole life. I know you aren’t from the same place, but where I come from, love isn’t supposed to be about a condition.” She started to protest this characterization, but Ben struck again, “You know who you sound like, with all this love of mutants stuff? You sound like Magneto.” The name alone sent a shiver down Ben’s spine. “Him and all the others who would kill the regulars, usher in the age of the mutant. My family would be killed.” He blinked back a sudden rush of homesickness, “They may be dead already, I don’t know. They’re going to die without me anyway. I won’t be there.” His palms throbbed painfully under the assault of his digging fingernails. “But at least it won’t be because of me, because of people trying to use me.” 

Annie whispered his name, his adopted name, and stepped forward, away from the edge. Ben didn’t back away, accepted her embrace. She murmured soothingly in a language he didn’t understand, but replying was happily unnecessary. It was the first time he had let the feelings of guilt and longing overwhelm him. He hoped that Annie had done the same when she left home. 

“I can’t,” Ben gasped into Annie’s shoulder, “People will know and they’ll—we’ll have to hide again if they notice me changing things. They’ll always be looking. I don’t want to be a weapon, I just…” Annie shushed him and stroked his head gently. Ben’s hands were still in his pockets. He couldn’t bring himself to wrap his arms around her; it would be an admission of defeat. “I’m sorry, Annie. I just can’t.” 

They remained huddled together long enough that it dawned on Ben how awkward it would be if someone happened on that particular overlook at that moment. His moment of panic had abated but, conscious that Annie might be in the throes of her own, he didn’t pull away. Nonetheless, Ben was shamefully grateful when Annie finally released him. He might even have been able to be persuaded to one last clandestine reordering of the atoms, but Annie fixed him with her doe eyes and assured him that they would find another way. It was exhausting to keep up with her abrupt switchbacks. 

Annie was a strange one, Ben thought as they turned back. Perhaps her claims of being less than entirely human or mutant alike were not baseless.

XXX

Clint had always wondered what could be the point of the transparent computers Stark had pioneered, but it turned out that they could be useful. For example, he knew exactly what had made Steve gape in shock and then blush furiously without resorting to any of his finely honed espionage and interrogation techniques. If the thing could make a kill shot over fifteen hundred meters in a crosswind, Clint would be obsolete. 

“I thought you were okay with dudes doing each other,” Clint accused mildly.

Steve jumped comically and flushed more deeply. “No, it’s not—I mean, I am. I just—I guess I didn’t realize,” he trailed off helplessly. Steve fixed him with a truly pathetic expression, “Did you know?”

Why him? Clint mentally rolled his eyes and made a solid, totally ineffectual effort to keep the condescension out of his voice. “Steve, was everything the papers said about you true?”

“So, they’re not…” Steve gestured vaguely with one hand, possibly bursting a blood vessel in the struggle to come up with an appropriate euphemism. Clint crossed his arms and let Steve flounder. It was a difficult thing to resist surreptitiously recording this moment of political correctness failure for the entertainment value. If it went on long enough, it might even be decent blackmail material. But no, Clint was meant to appear to be on Steve’s side. 

“Are they?” Steve finally blurted in desperation, handing the incriminating evidence across the table. All Clint had wanted was a glass of orange juice, for fuck’s sake. Now he was stuck reassuring Captain America that Iron Man and the Hulk were not gay for each other. 

Of course the Huffington Post had managed to take a highly suggestive picture of Tony leveling an unsmiling challenge at someone off camera, an arm slung jealously around Bruce’s shoulders. Of course the blurb enthusiastically floated the possibility that the wayward Tony Stark had finally found love with this mysterious suitor after wasting his life away in all the wrong vaginas. 

Of course, Tony had probably taken Bruce to whatever event this was with the sole intention of causing a furor, and was he ever achieving that goal. Steve hadn’t even pursed his lips over the staggering carelessness of hauling Bruce Banner across the country, away from all the people who could potentially control him in the event of an accident, and then shoving him into a media frenzy. Distracting Steve Rogers from his biological inclination to Captain was a feat that only Tony Stark could accomplish unintentionally.

Clint ran his hand through his hair agitatedly, “This site is a rumor mill, Cap. If this is the best they’ve got, nothing’s going on. Have you ever Googled Stark? He’s not exactly shy—actually, he’s pretty pleased about getting caught with his fingers in the pie, you know what I mean?” Steve turned positively purple and twisted his napkin shiftily. “Oh, my God, you _do_. You dirty bastard!” Steve hung his head in his hands and Clint laughed for what felt like the first time. He was going to stab this man in the back when Fury gave the signal. Ring the bell, make him drool. 

“What’s going on? What’s funny? What finally broke Steve?” Tony demanded, and then caught sight of the tablet. It might have been because Clint had thoughtfully raised it into Tony’s eye line. Teamwork. And he had a bet to win. Keeping the conversation on the topic of Tony’s potential homosexual tendencies would at the least give him some important information on how to proceed.

Oh!” Tony nodded, understanding and enthusiastic, and stole Steve’s coffee. “You should see Lainey. There’s a whole analysis on the probability of us doing it based on how well our shirts color-coordinated.” 

Clint rocked his chair back onto two legs and steadied himself with a boot on the table leg. “And?”

“She regretfully rules negatively.” Tony made a face and started shoveling sugar into Steve’s mug. “Regretfully in the sense that she wishes it was true. Apparently there’s a sizeable Avengers fandom that aggressively promotes homoeroticism. You should read some of the smut they write, it’s incredibly—”

“Excuse me?” spluttered Steve, straightening so quickly that his chair scraped away from the table. “They know Bruce is the Hulk?”

“Is that really what you got from the information that a bunch of female college students are whacking off thinking of us having orgies up here?” Clint asked incredulously. “And that Stark has been reading their porn?”

“I don’t really care what anybody does,” Steve dismissed the images of Tony Stark jerking off and coeds furtively fingering themselves with impressive effortlessness. “Bruce’s identity is supposed to be confidential. Who was the leak?”

Tony gave up Steve’s coffee as a bad job and dumped it out into the sink. “There’s no leak, Cap, they just think that we make thrilling fuck buddies. I’m the Avenger,” he jabbed himself indignantly in the chest with a thumb for emphasis. “One is enough. Although, I did have a rather impressive sex fantasy fan base before I ran anchor for this relay team. Both as myself and as Iron Man,” he bounced on the balls of his feet and grinned in satisfaction.

“Why?” Steve asked in perfect innocence. Damn, but he was conniving. Clint liked him better every day. 

There was a split second of Tony scowling before inspiration hit. “Why not?” he leaned back and shrugged. “I think my rather impressive track record proves I have a certain amount of sex appeal. Bruce is the kind of cute you know translates into dynamite in bed. Motto of the porn industry: one is good, two is amazing. There are whole swaths of the Internet that could cream its shorts at the thought of me and him together. Picture it.” 

Tony locked eyes with Steve and licked his lips. His hands drifted to his jeans pockets, leaving his thumbs brushing lightly next to his fly. “Kissing. Pulling at each other’s hair. Panting as we unbutton each other. Grinding together for a little tease before the real fun.” Oriented toward Steve like he was confiding a secret, voice pitched low and rough, the sneaking suspicions Clint had harbored about Tony’s rumored magnetism were dispelled. Even on the periphery, Clint felt his groin tauten. Steve had become tense and completely still. “I’d let him push me onto the bed, or up against the wall, let him hold me down. There’d be bruises in the morning, hidden ones but the best would be the ones on my wrists and neck for everyone to see, to know what I let him do to me.”

The front legs of Clint’s chair reconnected with the floor with a crash. The flush that had settled in Steve’s neck climbed to his hair. Tony did not blush and managed to recover his mask of flippancy with a brief cough. “If you want the details, SweetFancyPotter paints a riveting tableau. I really should get her into my PR department.” Tony snapped his fingers imperiously, “JARVIS, get her name and number to Darcy. I want SweetFancyPotter on payroll by the end of the week.”

“If I must,” JARVIS griped, and that was new but Clint couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by a computer taking exception with possibly the only average human living in the Tower. After weeks of pretending that he had not finally realized that he had a massive Thing for/with Captain America, Tony had baited Steve with a teaser of what could be a really excellent gay porno. One that did not once specify who was allowed to mark Tony with his hands and mouth. More importantly, though, Tony had taken Steve’s coffee.

Trying to make Steve do his impression of a strawberry was practically a hobby, and Tony had hit the mark spectacularly. At least, once Clint reminded them that he was still in the room. Before that, Steve had been too transfixed to be properly self-conscious. Clint wondered briefly how things might have escalated if Steve and Tony had been alone.

The coffee, that was the real heart of the matter. Clint had been watching people through binoculars and scopes for enough years to know that they didn’t do that sort of thing lightly. Taking food from someone without asking, without food ever having been offered by that person in the past, it didn’t happen except in three scenarios. (1) The presumptive party was showing dominance, underscoring the vulnerability of the other. Clint did not think this was likely; he and Steve sometimes rubbed each other the wrong way, but Tony was never so subtle if he wanted a pissing contest. Case in point: the verbal seduction to prove…a point of some sort. 

(2) The parties were intimate enough that food became by default common property. Tony Stark had never, in Clint’s experience or as documented in either SHIELD’s file or the public domain, been that close with anyone. Maybe he had with Pepper, during some quiet dinner at home, but in every other instance, he was practically a germaphobe about coming into contact with others’ belongings, let alone their eating utensils. Which left (3) the taker wanted to create the illusion of that kind of intimacy, most often for personal gratification. 

Steve was intently studying his empty plate, cheeks still aflame as he gently nudged his fork. When it scraped against the dishware, he flinched infinitesimally. Tony kept talking, whether to himself or to JARVIS was inconsequential and perhaps a question for philosophers, his fingers tapping impatiently against the counter as the coffee brewed. Clint knew that Tony’s first defense mechanism was incessant verbal vomitus, but it was difficult to distinguish from his usual verbal vomitus. Perhaps he was avoiding looking at them deliberately. 

“Tony, are you sleeping with Dr. Banner?” For some reason, directness seemed to lessen Steve’s discomfiture. “I wouldn’t—I don’t care if you are—”

“Good.”

“—unless it threatens unit cohesion,” Steve finished sternly.

“In the face of what, exactly? There’s nothing and no one to test our _unit cohesion_ ,” he disparaged the military turn of phrase with a sneer. “All quiet on the Earth front since Loki got crated back to the pound.” Rage burned through Clint’s chest at the name, and Steve appeared for the briefest of moments despondent.

“I know that, but we need to—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony irritably batted away Steve’s lecture on preparedness. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Bruce and I aren’t fucking.” The espresso machine’s rumbling ended and Tony discarded the steaming mug on the table. “Nothing to fear, your fragile team dynamic is safe from nasty Tony. Here; I’m switching to scotch.”

As Tony stormed out of the kitchen in high dudgeon, Steve unconsciously pulled the coffee toward his place setting. For a second time, he looked beseechingly at Clint for an explanation.

“I got no fucking idea,” Clint lied. 

XXX

“Sir, we have them.” Fury accepted the tablet from Maria Hill. There was a clear photograph of two people, a man and a woman, walking on a sidewalk. It was from an elevated angle, so their eyes were in shadow, but it was much clearer than the grainy security camera footage and in color. There was the ghost of some past fight on the man’s face and, really, that was an impressive shade. He must be keeping up with it; the roots were barely showing. “That’s Bemidji, Minnesota. Updates from local LEOs show them driving north. Shall I scramble a team?” 

“I’ll cancel the order in an hour.” Passing the tablet back across his desk, Fury commanded, “Prepare a file for Captain America. Assume Stark will be looking; encrypt, but only slow him down. Also make up a more comprehensive paper version. I’m leaving in ten minutes.” 

“Barton or Romanov?” Hill enquired, already typing one-handedly. 

“Barton.” Hill’s eyebrows twitched minutely. “Do you disapprove?”

“No, sir, merely surprised.” She met his gaze unflinchingly, “I would have thought, if his first assignment was playing double agent against one of our own, that you would give him training wheels.” 

“I won’t tell Agent Romanov you called her that.” 

Hill thanked him succinctly and marched out. Fury briefly considered her concern as he locked his computer. Implying that Barton could not be trusted would only alienate him, and his eagerness to prove himself was the surest safeguard against Barton allying himself elsewhere. If he had confided in Romanov, as apt to have done as not, Fury was confident that she would have advised him to stay with SHIELD as long as it was in his best interest. Fury intended to be in his best interest. Clint Barton was not a model agent, but Fury would have him either loyal to SHIELD or dead. He would have every dangerous man and woman, beast and alien, either loyal to him or dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Lainey that Tony mentions is the eponymous proprietor of the [entertainment gossip website](http://www.laineygossip.com/). If you like that sort of thing, I recommend it (and so does Tony Stark).


	11. Chapter 11

Steve had a vague inkling that he should not be so excited. 

Really, though, he had a right. Somebody had recognized him during what was apparently being called the Battle for New York and within two weeks of his return from a cross-country motorcycle trip, there were people camped outside of his apartment building. The day he came home to find an exceptionally self-confident female reporter sprawled in his bed wearing only his sheets, Steve had put his foot down. He probably would have ended up in the SHIELD barracks, except when he went to go see Fury about it, Tony Stark was storming out of Fury’s office fuming about some trademark dispute. Fury had gotten a truly terrifying twinkle in his eye and pointed out that team dynamics would be greatly improved by increased familiarity. 

Tony had figuratively waved Steve in without a word of protest and then sicced Pepper Potts on Director Fury with instructions to salt and burn. The last Steve had heard, Stark Industries had full ownership of the Iron Man name and image and a fifty percent stake in those of the rest of the Avengers. 

Since then, Steve had had few opportunities to leave the Tower. The press quickly realized that Steve had moved into the Stark Industries skyscraper and to avoid speculation, both SI and SHIELD issued curt statements explaining that it was being used as a second base of operations for the Avengers. To this end, both Natasha and Clint had been quartered there, and they had all been advised to keep low profiles to dissuade media attention. Despite their best efforts to remain invisible or perhaps because of it, several bloggers had begun calling Stark Tower the Superhero Clubhouse; Pepper had threatened lawsuits against all publications that referred to it as Avengers Tower. 

Steve had been hopeful that the four of them would strike up a rapport, but Tony kept extremely odd hours and was almost constantly busy with his other obligations, Natasha was secretive and often away on classified missions, and Clint was taciturn and possibly antisocial. It was often lonelier living with three other people than Steve would ever have thought possible. What little communication there was seemed to be inevitably transmitted via either cellular device or JARVIS. 

Someone – there had to be a physical person doing it, right? – restocked the refrigerator and pantry whenever it was necessary, all the laundry and gym facilities were no more than several flights of stairs away, and there had consequently been literally no reason to leave the Tower. The only assignments Steve had gotten since the Chitauri were interviews and other publicity events. Even his SHIELD therapist came to him until Steve insisted that he go to Dr. Roopali’s office, and _still_ , the only expansion of his world was the inside of a black SUV and the interior of SHIELD’s temporary headquarters. 

More often than he cared to admit, Steve felt incongruously angry at his housemates, at Fury, at the world, for no reason he could articulate. Nor did he try to explain it to Dr. Roopali, who was tickled pink over how well Steve had adapted to the modern world. When the resentment was suffocating, he went down to the gym and asked JARVIS to play the music Clint liked. It was harsh and discordant and Steve hated it, but if he played it loud enough, it drowned out everything he wished he did not feel.

A potential threat to international security had never been so well received. 

Steve had managed to talk the Director into a quiet takedown instead of a paramilitary assault. He would approach the marks alone and Clint would provide backup. Steve was still leery of Clint’s involvement, but it would hopefully be minimal, and he had too closely identified with Clint’s frustrations at being benched for months to refuse him escape.

The operatives were in International Falls, Minnesota, and Steve would prefer not to find out whether Nick Fury was willing to ignore petty details like jurisdiction. It was a bad place to have a fight, but the mission objective was to bundle the two targets without causing a scene. Steve’s objective was to figure out a way to make it look like they escaped from under his and Clint’s noses without actually letting them escape; his body thrummed with excitement at the challenge.

“I’ve got eyes,” Clint announced in the soft, perfectly even tone he adopted in the field.

Nodding absently, Steve took a sip of his drink without tasting it. His attention was split between the television playing something sports related and the reflection of the rest of the bar. There were a bunch of men in suits sitting around a table and passionately weighing in on an earlier basketball game, and superimposed on them, a man nursing his third beer, Steve, and their targets. Clint would have taken up his position behind them in the restaurant, a pistol at the small of his back and a knife in his boot. Neither had their preferred weapons, but Steve had chosen this location and this strategy conscious of that handicap. It made them less recognizable and added an extra irresistible element of risk.

In his ear, Steve heard Clint order a beer and nachos. The woman rapped the counter to get the bartender’s attention and ignored the man protesting another round. 

Tuning out the sportscasters, Steve studied their targets more carefully in the reflection. She had long brown hair hanging loose that she kept touching, pushing it behind her ears and flipping it over her shoulder. Anna Darwin was the name on the passport she had used at the rental car service. In the photograph in SHIELD’s dossier, she was straight-faced. When she smiled, Anna Darwin had a charming overbite. It wasn’t easy to hear her over the television and the music and the ambient noise of the restaurant, but Steve was confident she had a British accent. About five-foot-six or seven, Steve guessed, a hundred and twenty-five pounds. 

Ben Cohen was taller, perhaps five-ten, a hundred and fifty or so pounds. His companion had gamine charm that attracted attention but Ben Cohen hunched slightly and spoke lowly, like he was trying to avoid notice. It was a futile effort, given that his hair was a frankly alarming shade of pink. Steve had stared appropriately when he had approached the bar.

“He’s the powerful one,” Clint assessed. Steve cocked his head slightly in invitation to continue. “She scans the room constantly, like a bodyguard. He’s weak, doesn’t handle himself like he knows how to fight. If she was the conjurer, she wouldn’t bother with him. Dead weight.”

Smoothing his napkin, Steve glanced at them out of the corner of his eye. The woman was looking over her shoulder in the process of tossing her hair again, as casually as Steve was pretending to not watch them. She sipped her martini and slipped off her stool.

“Where are you going?” the man asked in surprise. 

“Bathroom, geez,” she laughed. “I’ll only be a minute, don’t get your shorts in a bind.” 

Separated. Get him out of Clint’s sight, incapacitate, and then get Iron Man to pick him up. Steve could hardly have planned a better setup. Before the thought had crystallized in his mind, Steve’s phone was in his hand and he was texting Tony. “Mark,” he murmured and nodded. He felt rather than saw Clint rise and follow the woman down the passage to the toilets. 

Not much time. Steve leaned against the counter next to Ben Cohen and smiled.

“Uh, hi.” Cohen’s eyes raked Steve’s torso involuntarily and what he saw made him straighten slightly. That could work. 

“Steve,” he smiled more widely and offered a hand. Next to his bright hair, Ben Cohen had impossibly blue eyes.

“Ben,” he reciprocated automatically. Fury was certain that they were using aliases; he must be a masterful liar. His hand was cool and damp from the condensation on his beer. “Listen, I’m really—I’m here with a friend—”

“I like your hair, Ben” Steve interrupted, maintaining the handshake for a few calculated extra beats. “How long have you had it like that?”

Ben’s hand flexed up abortively and his forehead darkened with a blush. “Almost a year. Well—yeah, almost a year. Thanks,” he added belatedly. 

“This is going to sound really weird,” Steve admitted sheepishly, rubbing the nape of his neck so he could look at Ben through his eyelashes, “but would you step outside with me? Oh, God, that sounds bad, doesn’t it?”

“It really does, yeah,” Ben agreed wryly.

“I mean, I wouldn’t do that, so why should you? Anyway, it’s stupid, I was just—well, never mind. Sorry, I’m really bad at this,” he grinned self-deprecatingly.

“No, it’s fine,” Ben assured him reflexively. “I would—What’s outside?” Got him.

“I just wanted to talk, you know, somewhere a little quieter.” Steve gestured feebly. “It was a dumb thing to say, your friend would worry.” A self-conscious brush against his collar brought Ben’s attention back to his chest and down. 

“Yeah, well,” Ben Cohen’s gaze rose to Steve’s mouth and then skittered away. “We could talk. Outside.”

“Shit, she gave me the slip,” Clint hissed in his ear. 

“Yeah?”

“Must have gone out the back.”

“Yeah,” he smiled hesitantly but stood up readily. Steve touched him lightly on the small of his back as they wound their way between the tables and listened intently for Clint’s progress.

It was cold; Ben drew his shoulders up toward his ears and folded his arms tightly. “So.” His breath came out in a pearly huff. 

“Here,” Steve led him out of sight of the windows of The Winter Buck. “Are you from around here?”

“No, Annie and I are, uh—we’re on vacation. I’m from Washington. Washington State.”

“Where are you headed?”

Ben jerked one shoulder up in a spasmodic shrug, “Nowhere in particular. What about—” Steve cut him off with a sharp blow to the throat.

Clint gasped – surprise, pain. 

“Hawkeye, report!” Steve wrapped a stunned Ben Cohen in one arm and dug a thumb into the pressure point at the top of his spine the way Widow had shown him. Easily carrying his body into the dark alley, Steve fished one hand in his pocket to extricate his phone and tucked it into Ben’s jeans pocket. After using a zip tie to secure Cohen to the dumpster and ensuring his body was hidden in the shadows, he moved quickly around the restaurant to the back parking lot. Six seconds and Clint still had not replied.

“Hawkeye!” Steve could hear what sounded like a scuffle. He turned the corner; there was no one there.

There was clearly _something_ moving in the lot. It slammed up against the skip with a metallic bang. Steve could hear shoes scraping against the asphalt and fleshy thuds from blows landed. A puddle heaved, apparently of its own accord, and some of the droplets vanished in midair. 

“Hawkeye, you’re invisible.” He noticed with a detached bemusement that he sounded perfectly calm.

“Yeah, so is—” Everything went perfectly silent. Clint’s voice, heels on the blacktop, the hum of the streetlamp, the rumble of cars several streets to the east, the bustle from The Winter Buck that only Steve could hear properly through the walls, it was all abruptly gone. Not even his breath was audible. 

Steve yelled for Clint; he could feel it in his throat, but there was no sound. This was never what he wanted. 

“—bitch! Oh, fuck me!” Clint twisted the woman’s arm up behind her back with a sharp bark of relieved laughter. Anna Darwin hissed angrily and struggled, but Clint was much stronger and could see her; he ably dodged the kick. Blood had begun to ooze from her rapidly swelling lower lip. “That was…yeah, I’ll give you that. Where’s Cohen?” 

“He got away.” Steve was distracted enjoying the sound of his own voice, but not so much that he didn’t see Darwin’s eyes gleam in triumph. “How did she do that?”

“Don’t care,” Clint clipped out, transitioning rapidly back into his field persona. “So long as she can’t do it again.” And he performed the same maneuver that Steve had done to Cohen, allowing Darwin to crumple to the ground. Unconscious, she didn’t look dangerous anymore, just small and feminine and battered. Hawkeye frowned at Steve as he crouched to depress the plunger on a small hypodermic needle into the bicep of his insensate charge. “Cohen got away from you. How?”

“I took him outside. He said he was from Washington. I moved to incapacitate him and…he got away. Just vanished. You were definitely right; he was the powerful one, and I underestimated that because he wasn’t as strong as her.” He was performing frustration, chagrin, and impatience with aplomb. It was so goddamn easy. He didn’t even have to think about it. “Let’s just get her back to base. Maybe she can lead us to him.”

“Yeah,” Clint snapped the binders on and lifted Anna off the ground with a quiet grunt; her long hair trailed through the old water and dripped onto Clint’s boots. “Or he’ll come back for her. Let’s get moving.” 

“I can carry her,” Steve volunteered with outstretched arms.

“So you can take the credit for my takedown when your own went fubar? Not a chance!”

XXX

Fury sighed internally in resignation. He had not expected Rogers to defy orders so completely so soon. Perhaps Stark was a more potent influence than he had foreseen. 

Nick Fury had not come to direct an organization that marshaled superhumanly abled individuals for nothing. Unlike Rogers, Fury had not needed chemical enhancement to be a master strategist. There was nothing in Captain Rogers’s expression or tone that suggested he was lying, but it was obvious that Cohen had as much escaped Rogers as much as Banner ever escaped surveillance; it was simply not possible. A super soldier who could not handle an untrained civilian and an intelligence organization that could not keep tabs on one man were anathemas. Fury would not brook either and therefore neither existed.

He broke the video connection with little preamble and settled back into his chair to think. So, the girl could manipulate perceptions. That was a useful skillset, if he could talk her into some variation on loyalty. Barton said she was recalcitrant, but which of Fury’s charges was meek? It would be easy enough to find the right button to push to break her to his hand – both Rogers and Barton already suspected it would be the man, Cohen – but that was hardly his main concern. Rogers had kept Cohen for himself. All their remote reconnaissance showed Iron Man maintaining a safe distance from the operation, an ultimately unneeded precaution if things went very far south. No doubt Stark had managed to manipulate their readings to hide a quick foray into International Falls for the package.

Cohen would wind up at the Tower, and Stark would make it as logistically and politically difficult as possible for Fury to extract him. He and Rogers were quite right in assuming that Fury would try to bend Cohen to Fury’s will. It was frustrating they did not appreciate the strategic value of Fury’s choices. Nobody would be keen on black hole technology in the hands of someone like Loki, and Fury was trying to _prevent_ that. He was hardly a supervillain.

Getting Rogers’s respect was the key. Stark was powerful, but the moral high ground was not among his multitude possessions and he had a psychological compulsion to flout authority; Rogers would suffer no less than Fury had in that respect. As long as the only reason for his alliance with Rogers was spiting Fury, Stark was only an incidental problem. Banner wanted to stay neutral, and would probably sacrifice any moral qualms if Fury made an empty promise of recognizing Banner’s privacy. Romanov was utterly neutral to begin with, and fealty was not something Fury expected her to have to anyone. Barton’s loyalty had been taken care of. Fury would not worry about Thor until Thor reentered his dominion, limited to Earth for the present.

Out of some fluke of cultural conditioning or admiration following New York, though, all the Avengers had some regard for Rogers’s leadership. Insubordination from Captain America was accordingly intolerable. Earning Rogers’s respect would take far too long, so he would have to manipulate some semblance of it.

Rogers did not suspect that Barton was a mole. The Captain did not care for cloak and dagger work, so he would have resolutely declined Barton’s assistance on the mission if he knew. Fury still had that card up his sleeve – not an ace, but a jack.

Fury glanced at the time – they would be delivering the girl in less than forty minutes. He weighed her worth against the Rogers problem. That sacrifice might be worth the payoff—oh, but that was perfect. Rogers was cripplingly upright. Give him something in a clear display of lack of malice and Rogers would feel compelled to reciprocate. Show a facsimile of trust and Steve would return the favor in gold. 

And if Rogers held anything back, Fury still had at least one spy in the Tower. 

XXX

Somewhere over the Great Lakes, the woman regained consciousness. Clint had secured her to the chopper’s detention bar himself, so he wasn’t worried about her getting loose. Not to mention, Cap had kept a weather eye fixed on her the whole trip. Darwin didn’t do anything except adjust to a more comfortable position and then sit stonily the remainder of the flight.

She was not well-trained, but she knew enough to be able to land painful blows. The real danger was the tricks she could pull with a man’s eyes and ears. Clint was known for his eyesight, but his hearing was better than most and he knew what to listen for. There had been nothing out of the ordinary in the back lot and then she had struck. Not only could she block out sound, she could focus the void. But she didn’t seem able to both concentrate on a fight and the trick; after a lucky punch, Clint had caught a flicker of color and been able to hear her breathing. Not a fighter by habit, but she had been expecting him and nearly gotten the drop.

He had an uneasy hunch that Cohen could have been caught unawares, and the only reason they didn’t have both targets in hold was that Steve didn’t want it that way. 

Fury had been right to keep an eye on Cap.

The comm crackled to life, “Condor One, Condor One, come in, this is Base.”

“This is Condor One on approach, requesting clearance to land.”

“Affirmative, Condor One. Helipad three open for you. Orders to idle for further instructions.”

“Copy. Out.” The orders didn’t make sense but Clint didn’t have the authority to demand sense. He tried to clear his mind of questions, loosening his grip on the joystick as an exercise in indifference.

A black sedan was parked near the landing pad. Expected, since they had to get the girl back to SHIELD somehow, but prisoner transfer was not the sort of thing Fury himself did. Then again, if a simple transfer was all that would happen, there would be no need to idle.

As the girders lowered the last few meters to the tarmac, Steve steadied himself on a handhold, staring at Fury. Darwin showed no interest in the proceedings, but Clint would bet his warmest, softest sweatshirt that she was monitoring everything as best she could from that position. As soon as they touched down, Steve jumped out. Fury strode to meet him, and they faced off. Clint could imagine the false look of polite confusion on Steve’s face.

He didn’t have to imagine the conversation, though; Steve still had his headset on and he and Fury both had to shout to be heard over the rotors.

“Is everything alright, Director?”

“Everything is going well for you, Captain. Good to know that Stark can fuck up my watcher equipment. That went off without a hitch, in case you’re wondering.” 

After a short pause, Steve answered stiffly, “I don’t like having to do this—”

“I know you don’t, Cap,” Fury interrupted, and he sounded almost sympathetic. “I don’t like that you feel like you have to do it.” Through the windshield, Clint could see Fury walk around Steve, just a few steps, enough to make a point of his power, before turning back. “I know you and Stark cooked up some scheme to get Cohen without having to give him to me. I’m sure he was on his way to the Tower while you were feeding me some bullshit about losing him. Contrary to your evident beliefs, Captain, I am not the enemy.”

Standing up a little straighter, Steve opened his mouth to reply but Fury steamrolled over him, “I prefer to keep detained enemy combatants within SHIELD, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Captain America is more valuable to me than protocols. So, keep Darwin, too.” Steve looked less surprised than Clint felt. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that they should be kept separate and under close watch. Anything you feel like sharing, let me know.”

And with that, Fury brushed past Rogers on his way to the car. A beat later, Steve started for the chopper. Just at they were the farthest apart they could be and still hear each other, Fury turned and yelled something to Steve, who waved in acknowledgement.

The look on Steve’s face when he hopped back in the bird was the one Clint recognized from running ops with Coulson. It was the one that said he was trying to salvage a mission when the information had steered them wrong. It made Clint hate Steve.

“What’d Fury say?” Steve knew what he meant; they were already lifting off for the short flight to Manhattan.

“He wants the helicopter back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know anything about military flight communication, but it sounded appropriately terse and official to me. 
> 
> I may have lied about Thor and Loki. They probably won't figure in for another two chapters at least. Hopefully it's interesting enough as it is. All kudos and comments greatly appreciated!
> 
> It's not crucial to the story, but if you're interested in what music Clint likes, think the songs that Jeremy Renner's character listens to in _The Hurt Locker_ ("[Fear (Is Big Business)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLgn42qib6g)", "[Khyber Pass](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy-9fDxn-cU)", and "[Palestina](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RER5bdAPNs4)", all by Ministry) and "[Beast](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4aaScgdXSQ>)" by Nico Vega. If Steve was paying attention to the words, he would probably be bothered by the insinuations of the Nico Vega number, but all he really gets out of them is _loud_.


	12. Chapter 12

“But,” Jane frowned, “why? I mean, we can do it anywhere, but what’s wrong with the lab?”

Bruce smiled mildly and shrugged. Not like he didn’t know; like he was trying to be nice about not telling her the truth. “Tony is doing something in there, I didn’t ask. I got your whiteboard out before, though. Don’t let it out of your sight; he wants to toss it out a window.”

“Okay,” Jane agreed reluctantly. It hurt more than it should that Dr. Banner was lying to her, and she would never mention that to Darcy. At least not sober.

“Have you seen SHIELD’s notes on how the Bifrost works?” And now he was trying to distract her. “Someone managed to ask Thor a couple of things when he was here last time. I don’t think he understands it completely, but it doesn’t seem to be merely mechanical.”

“No, it’s a little…” Jane searched for an apt word and a neutral, not-betrayed expression. “Maybe telepathic?”

XXX

If she acknowledged it, Natasha felt dimly irritated. At herself, for not picking up on Stark’s subterfuge before he had followed Steve and Clint to Minnesota on the flimsy excuse of being backup, but mostly at Clint, for throwing in his lot with Fury. Natasha knew better than most that betrayal and exploitation must be expected in their line of work – hell, in all human relations – but she still wished that Clint at least had chosen the lesser of two evils. Hopefully, he was still keeping his options loose, but given Clint’s involuntary predisposition for unswerving loyalty, Natasha doubted it. He had gotten lucky with Coulson, but Fury would sell him out without a second thought if it would yield a net profit. 

As the helicopter approached Stark Tower, Natasha pushed aside the question of whether or not she would do the same.

Beside her, the left hand of the Iron Man suit convulsed into a fist; Stark was seething at Fury. Natasha could only be grateful that she was not the unwilling audience to the tirade he was certainly spewing inside the helmet. Most likely because Stark thought she had ratted them out to Fury. In time, he and the others would all realize that Fury was just good at his job.

The chopper set down with a bracing swirl of wind and a faint metallic and petrol scent that Natasha realized she had begun to associate with Stark. She tried to meet Clint’s eyes through the cockpit windows, but he never looked her way. Sloughing off disappointment, Natasha stepped forward to get a good read on the captured combatant.

Despite being a prisoner, Anna Darwin held herself haughtily. It wasn’t the acculturated arrogance of a lifetime in dominance, though, but the disdain of a soldier who thinks that is how to appear impressive in a hopeless situation. Her clothes were untidy and still a bit damp from dirty water that had soaked one sleeve of her shirt and dripped from her hair. Rogers had taken pity on her during the flight and wrapped her in a metallic fire blanket; it crumpled to the floor when Clint pulled her unceremoniously upright. Though his mouth tightened at the rough handling, Steve didn’t say anything.

“So, Fury just handed her over?” Stark questioned disbelievingly. “We took his precious and he’s like, ‘Here! Have this one, too!’ That’s got to smell fishy to you—”

“We can discuss it later, Iron Man,” Steve clipped warningly. Darwin curled her lip at the unprofessionalism of airing intra-organizational fissures in front of a hostile; Natasha privately agreed. Raising an eyebrow at Clint was enough to get his nod of understanding and another dose of anesthetic into the girl; she went under rapidly, struggling to keep herself upright but stumbling into Steve anyway. 

“Where are their things?”

“SHIELD cleaners were supposed to get the rental.” Clint glanced at Steve and shrugged, “I expect they got their coats from the bar. Probably paid the tab, too.”

“Is that it, then?” The faceplate retracted, the better to exhibit Stark’s annoyance. “Fury thinks they have some sort of device like the Tesseract. Doesn’t matter if we have the bodies, because the power’s in something else. Why else would he hand them over? Son of a bitch played us, he knew we would try to cut him off and let us think we succeeded!”

“Let’s just get her secured,” interrupted Steve, sounding more stolid than weary. “Anyway, there’s definitely something in this girl that’s not normal. We searched her, and there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, so whatever she did to make herself and Hawkeye invisible came from her.”

“She did what?” Natasha punctuated the urgency of the inquiry using tones of incredulity and both eyebrows.

“Oh, like you weren’t listening in on me listening in on their check-in with Fury,” Stark rolled his eyes impertinently.

“And that’s what they told Fury, who they were lying to,” she shot back, dropping all pretense. “Do you tell him the whole truth?” The twist of Stark’s mouth corroborated the self-apparent answer. With him quelled for the time being, Natasha turned back to Steve and Clint.

“That was the truth,” Clint shrugged again, “at least, as far as I know it. I didn’t see what went down with Cohen.” There was no bitterness in his voice or his face, but Steve’s shoulders went back like he was defending himself anyway.

“I knocked him out and secured him to a dumpster. Tony flew in and grabbed him. That’s all.”

“Whatever you say, Cap.” Clint dismissively turned his back and climbed back into the cockpit. “Unless you want to give her back to SHIELD, out of the copter.”

Steve let him take off without replying. It was some new variety of ‘not good’ that he was not the sort of loyal friend to Clint that he was to the dying, or even the anonymous New Yorkers they had defended. Was that loyalty?

Stark kept his mouth shut as he and Natasha flanked Steve down to the laboratory; the silence was tense. Natasha recalled the bet she and Clint had made. It had been just over two weeks – a veritable lifetime – since she had observed conclusive proof that day in the gym. She was ashamed that she longed for such simple frustrations.

In the lab, she got a glimpse of Cohen passed out in a containment unit while Steve and Tony had a short, stilted conversation over improvising accommodations for Darwin. With obvious displeasure, Steve deigned to leave the girl on a table under Tony’s supervision while he went to get pillows. 

“How was I supposed to know I would need more than one cot?” Tony groused to nobody in particular. “He’s just lucky I have multiple small, secure rooms in my private skyscraper for discretely holding random people the government has drugged and abducted and we have subsequently re-abducted. ‘Failure to plan for contingencies,’ my ass!” 

“Private.”

“What?”

“The Tower. You said it’s private.”

“Are you okay? Did you inhale something? I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave anything mind-altering out—unless it was recreational. Why, Agent Romanov! Are you letting your metaphorical hair down with chemical aids?”

“Not right now,” Natasha managed glibly. “And you wouldn’t have any chance even if I was.” She smirked appropriately when Tony grouched, but it was a defensive reflex, not an emotional one. For the second time in too little time, Natasha had experienced the disturbing sensation of having missed something important until after it had happened. 

XXX

Darcy pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle a squeak of shock and terror. They were already gone, but she wouldn’t put it past Natasha to hear all the way down to the street. 

Nobody had mentioned the harboring of prisoners in the job description. Her degree was in political science and she’d taken two whole classes in constitutional law; undoubtedly, it had been beyond the pale when SHIELD had taken her mp3 player before; no way _that_ was legal. They might as well have shredded the Bill of Rights. Oh, God, she hadn’t read the fine print on her Stark Industries contract. Had she signed away the right to report shady as fuck dealings? 

They would see her when they came back. And she wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t meant to have seen that, to have seen her boss and Captain America and a government agent dragging along an unconscious woman, a woman who looked beaten up and no older than Darcy herself, and Darcy was still sitting on the floor next to the wall charger so she didn’t have to take a break from hate-watching fucking _Teen Wolf_. She could expect very few probable responses.

“Move,” she whispered to herself. “Move, _move_!”

And she did, smartphone tumbling to the floor, headphones catching painfully on her ears, nearly stumbling into the wall in clumsy haste.

The futility would strike Darcy when she made it to her room and had nowhere else to go. Even if it wasn’t obvious from her phone on the floor – her shell was extremely distinctive and Jesus, it was probably still playing the damn episode – it was ludicrous to hope that JARVIS wouldn’t know where she had been and what she had accidentally witnessed. And it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t meant it, or that she would take it all back if she could – she was not such a good person that Darcy would not prefer to be unaware of, or at least be able to ignore the more unpleasant underbelly of defending New York and the world and shit. For god’s sake, Captain America couldn’t be naturally whitewashed.

The realization that there was nothing Darcy could do if they decided to censor or kill her – and the latter was probably less likely, but she was a realist – was a relief. Impotence goes hand in hand with a strange sort of tranquility. Having no way out of whatever consequences might come made the question of what to do next immaterial. In fact, she could probably go back to retrieve her phone and charging cable from the hallway outside the lab, still the wrong place at the wrong time, and it wouldn’t make one whit of difference in her sentence.

She didn’t, but she could have done.

Instead, she laid on her bed, which was nice, but a little too hotel. Admittedly, a ridiculously expensive and posh hotel, but the sheets hadn’t become soft and threadbare from a thousand washes or become infused with a human scent. They had probably come out of a package a few hours before Darcy slept on them. If she died tomorrow, at least Darcy had been able to find the simple, unimpeachable contentment in sheets worn thin by a lifetime of dreams. 

She thought about Tony Stark, who must have slept on impersonal sheets his whole life, and Steve Rogers, who had died during a war, woken up in a strange new land, and since known nothing but SHIELD barracks, hotel rooms, and Tony Stark’s beds. That thought made her snigger, and then derailed her stream of consciousness for several minutes for a completely different reason. 

It took literally shaking herself to get back on track. The more she thought about it, the more depressingly she viewed the whole Avengers team. Each was exceptional, but they all had missed out on the uncomplicated bliss Darcy had only recently lost. Natasha was a puzzle and possibly venomous, but Darcy suspected that Russian assassins did not understand the value of sheets so old and familiar that they felt like an embrace. She thought about Clint, who didn’t look sad and yet was drowning, and Darcy wished she knew a way to fabricate the comfort of timeworn sheets for him. There were poor, pretty Jane and Dr. Banner, who might have had good sheets when they were young, but had been swept up into the uncompromising embraces of their respective genius. There was a young woman in the lab whose name Darcy did not know, but she also must need something reassuring right now.

Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Darcy’s mother had often told her that she could do great things if only she wanted it enough. Little comments like that were supposed to encourage and foster ambition, but the fact remained that most people didn’t do great things. Whether she died tomorrow or in fifty years, Darcy Lewis would likely not have amounted to much in the world. There were days when this prospect of oblivion was frightening, and others when it was peaceful. She had never wanted to be great, except that it might please her mother, and it had long been obvious that it had never been a possibility for which to reach.

Lying there, thinking about the Winnie the Pooh sheets she’d had until she was ten and the striped cupcake sheets she’d had until she had left them behind to come to New York, Darcy was glad she didn’t have the burden of greatness; it seemed rather more prohibitive than she was willing to endure. Yet she was living with six people (seven, as soon as Thor came) who might be suffocating under it, and without the small solace of a sense of family. 

Darcy was not a great person, nor even a particularly good person, but there was an unavoidable obligation awaiting her.

“Aw, hell!” She smacked the mattress for good measure, and then a few more times after. “Motherfucking—shit, fuck, and crumpets! Goddamn it!” 

Godtiss help her, Darcy Lewis was going to have to give the Avengers _home_.

XXX 

The worst physical ailment Ben had ever experienced, discounting those that had been visited upon him by sexually insecure bastards, was the hernia at age fourteen. Banishing and conjuring illness was bad, but the headaches and nausea were usually short-lived. The second worst was strep throat. It had always been his kryptonite. Every year for as long as he could remember, he got strep sometime between November and February, and he awaited its arrival with dread. No amount of flu shots or vitamin C or removing his tonsils or cutting himself off from human contact would protect him. Some years, it wasn’t so bad, but other years he languished in misery for more than a week, only to emerge exhausted and pounds lighter from taking in nothing but bland oatmeal and sweet tea with honey. Just thinking of the double whammy in 1992 gave him a psychosomatic twinge. 

Ben’s first thought as he waded into consciousness was that it had come on shockingly fast this year His second was a lament that he was as much at the mercy of the bacteria in this reality as he had been at home. His third was a memory of a handsomely proportioned blonde smiling politely as he punched Ben in the neck.

“Oh, _God_.”

The pain was low in his throat and it felt like a fraying rope stretched almost to the point of breaking.

Never show fear, Annie had told him once. An enemy consumes fear and it makes him stronger as much as it makes you weaker. So, Ben swallowed with as small a wince as he could manage and tried to get some idea of what he would find when he opened his eyes. The bed was better than some of the ones he had slept on in the last few weeks, but narrow and still made. On the left and behind the pillow were walls that were so cool and smooth to the touch that they must be plated in metal. Somewhere near his hip there was a minute seam that confirmed this hypothesis. 

His body felt oddly separate from his consciousness, like his nerves weren’t relaying information as quickly as usual. By wiggling his toes, Ben determined that he was still wearing his shoes. Unable to hear anything or taste anything other that the remains of his beer, Ben slitted his eyes open. 

Everything was white. There was some sort of plastic covering on all the walls and ceiling so brightly white that it seemed to emit light independently. It felt bizarrely like the way heaven gets depicted in movies and television. The room was small, with one door beyond the foot of the bed – more a cot – with a small square glass observation window. Instead of a doorknob, there was an electronic pad inlaid into the wall. On the walls adjacent to and opposite the bed, just below the joint between wall and ceiling, were vents. A weird, high counter on the opposite wall, completely empty, and a drain in the middle of the floor were everything else to see. There was no toilet.

So, not a prison cell – at least, it hadn’t been built with that purpose in mind. Another painful swallow and Ben carefully eased himself up onto his elbows. His mind felt sluggish, but he hadn’t had much to drink – some sort of drug, then. How much time had passed since he had stupidly let himself be separated from Annie? Had she gotten away? Surely she had. Annie always looked out for tails and spies, and she knew how to fight. She wouldn’t have let her guard down for a pretty face.

Ben felt much sadder about losing her companionship than he worried about her safety.

If it was Annie in this situation, she would want to get a better idea of she would be dealing with. Shaking his head to clear the blur of the unidentified inebriant, Ben stood and crossed warily to the door. There were two panes of glass, one just inside his side of the door, and one several inches away inside the frame on the outer surface. The room was definitely supposed to contain, but if not a person, then what? Ben looked back at the drain in the floor and pictured a figure in crinkly white coveralls and a filtering mask carefully titrating a toxic fluid. 

Biting down on the realization that they were going to experiment on him, Ben forced himself to examine what little he could see of the outer room. It was empty and mostly dark, lit only by a gently glowing stripe around the walls. There was a table with two microscopes and something flat Ben thought might be another iPad and empty panes of glass suspended from the ceiling on flexible metal appendages, the function of which Ben could not imagine. There was nothing to refute his initial conclusion that he was in a laboratory of some sort.

After a moment of deliberation, Ben shrugged and poked at the geometric pattern on the flat surface of the door controls. “Unauthorized user,” a smooth British voice announced sharply as the pad lit up and squawked angrily. Ben froze, his heart beating wildly in a reverberation of his startled jump, but there was no other message. The red denial disappeared after a few minutes, leaving a more pleasant blue box inviting him to give his voice signature or a biometric scan to operate the door.

“Hello?” Ben tried.

“Unauthorized user,” the Brit repeated. It must be Ben’s imagination that the tone was milder this time. 

Ben walked around the room in eleven short strides. He could probably disintegrate the door and all the walls as well without much difficulty, but that would give information to whoever his captors were. It wouldn’t do any good to show them the extent of his abilities without learning anything about their strengths and weaknesses in the exchange. If it came to it, if there was no other option, Ben could always escape later. 

With nothing else to do in the present, he sat down on his cot and clasped his hands awkwardly in his lap. 

After a moment, he pulled his legs up onto the bed and leaned against the wall; it might be a long wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a disgustingly long time to finish; I was having a difficult time with Natasha's and Darcy's scenes. Hopefully, the next chapter will come much more smoothly and quickly. Depending on how the tone turns out, I may transplant the last scene with Ben to the upcoming segment. 
> 
> If it isn't already obvious, I lied through my teeth about Thor and Loki. I swear they will turn up! In the meantime, enjoy Darcy being a hopeless fangirl and all-around fabulous lady.


	13. Chapter 13

He didn’t sleep that night. Actually, he had not slept much in a long time. Flippant comment to Fury aside, he had barely gotten two hours of sleep a night during the war, and hardly any more since being thawed. At the time, Steve had first thought it was guilt that he was on a marketing campaign while everybody else was campaigning on the Continent, and later, concern for the safety of the other Commandos. 

In the weeks between awaking in a time capsule and Fury approaching him about saving the world, Steve figured his persistent insomnia was an atavistic shadow of those anxieties. Then he had a job, and everything changed. Or maybe he had long been changed, and only then realized. Whenever, it was a realization Steve revisited unhappily every time he looked out his window and saw the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

He knew Cohen was awake, but decided to let him cool his heels for a few hours; JARVIS was to tell Steve if Cohen looked like he needed anything. Giving that instruction was the work of a moment. Natasha had disappeared before he came back with the blankets for Miss Darwin; Tony stalked out not long after she was secured, grumbling about wasted time and resources. And he was alone. 

Even though he felt fatigued, Steve knew he could not sleep. If he laid down, he would only stare at the ceiling, or the wall, or the darkness held in by his palms, his mind and limbs humming with the compulsion to _do_. He was unwilling to face his sickness, but he didn’t want to give in, either; Steve ended up in the fire stairwell, sitting halfway down a flight of stairs. It was almost preternaturally silent there, sealed away from the steady thrum of the living, and Steve imagined that was how the ice had sounded. 

JARVIS interrupted his tense vigil with the news that Clint had come back from SHIELD with a preliminary inventory of Cohen’s and Darwin’s belongings. Steve nodded in acknowledgement, and wondered where the speakers were. He ought to get up and look at the report, puzzle out what Fury was hiding, and plan how to maintain the upper hand in this whole affair. He did not.

Eventually, Darcy Lewis stuck her head into the stairwell. She did not ask him what was wrong, but nor did she leave. And even if Steve could communicate the truth, he never would do so; he still had a duty. Instead, they sat quietly for a few minutes. Darcy was warm, and made the almost-noises of being that Steve never heard when he was alone. It was not quite comfortable, but perhaps less raw than solitude. 

“Want to watch a movie?” The question did not make sense. Though he searched them well, Darcy’s eyes held neither pity nor prurient intent. What did she want with him? Even if she didn’t know, surely she must have some inkling, some instinctual suspicion. 

When he only stared dumbly, Darcy knocked her shoulder against his arm. “Movie? Do you want to watch one?” 

Like a gear finally catching correctly, Steve’s brain shifted abruptly into an appropriate facsimile of normality. “It’s pretty late.” She didn’t deign to give such a stupid observation a verbal response, but her expression was loquacious. “What did you have in mind?” 

They watched a movie. It was… Well, Steve didn’t like it, but he appreciated the blunt reality of it all. It was different from the movies he had seen in his real life. Darcy rooted around in the pantry until she found packages that became popcorn by the marvelous box of the microwave. He liked when she laughed at his dismay at the emptied bowl, and at how many bags he went through. Without that encouragement, he would have stopped long before the sixth. To his surprise, Steve laughed, too, when Darcy performed dramatic retellings of Thor’s first visit to Earth, and it didn’t feel false.

At least he could still mix with normal, healthy people.

That did nothing to quell his keen anticipation for end of the waiting period he had arbitrarily assigned himself. If missions were to be so few and far between, Steve would do well to draw them out as long as he dared. When the last minute had run out at last, he forced himself to look at the inventory before racing to the lab. Nothing stood out, but Steve hadn’t expected it to do. In Fury’s position, he would be withholding the most pertinent information, and in the operatives’ position, he would be keeping whatever was most important to him as close as possible. He and Clint hadn’t found anything of note on the girl other than her weapon and a sachet of several small, cut diamonds, and Ben hadn’t carried anything but some change. Unless there was more to those innocuous miscellanea than met the eye, either there was something innate in their persons or Fury had already claimed the prize. He forced himself to focus on that as he prepared for the interview as slowly as he could manage.

Illicit elation was buzzing up his spine by the time Steve allowed himself to go into the lab. JARVIS brought the lights up without being asked. By some stroke of serendipity, Tony’s Room for Not So Safe Experiments was nearer to the door than the Closet of Breakable Things – and Steve didn’t know how those two had ended up sharing a wall – and therefore Darwin would not be able to see him going to talk to her partner. 

“JARVIS,” he prompted, in an amazingly calm tone that belied his internal cartwheels. 

“Voice print accepted. Authorized user: Capsicle.” Damn it, Tony. 

Ben Cohen was hugging his knees to his chest, eyes wide and pupils dilated in barely contained fear. It was some small comfort that Steve could still feel badly to have been the cause of that. He did his best to smile reassuringly. “I bought you some food,” he announced in carefully regulated tones, lifting the plate in proof.

Ben’s eyes were on the folder embossed with SHIELD’s logo in his other hand. “I’d prefer a key.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that.” He should have brought a chair, but it was too late now. Well, it might work in his favor. “I don’t know what you like, but I took a shot with peanut butter and jelly.” Steve sat on the end of the cot, setting down the plate as a minimal buffer between them. Cohen stiffened uneasily and recoiled slightly against the wall. The contrast between the white wall and his pink hair was arresting.

“I…” Ben frowned, “I didn’t think this was how kidnapping worked.”

“Yes, sorry, I’m a beginner.” 

Ben stared like he didn’t know what to make of Steve. A little defiantly, he hooked the plate with one finger and tugged it closer. “What kind of jelly?”

“Grape. I think that’s good, right? I’ve never had one. A—a friend said peanut butter and jelly was comforting.”

Watching his own finger poking absently at the bread, Cohen couldn’t keep a tiny smile from quirking his mouth. “You are either a really good actor, or you are actually terrible at this.”

“I promise I won’t torture you with my illustrious film career.” Ben smiled uncertainly; he thought it was a joke. Despite their tentative rapport, though, he made no move to eat the sandwich.

“Who are you?” 

The worst question he could have asked, right off the bat. “I told you. My name is Steve. Captain Steve Rogers.” 

“Captain of what?”

Of dead things. Of extraordinary people. Of nothing. “I was in the Army.”

Ben blanched, but nodded jerkily in acceptance. “Okay. Okay.” He looked away. The lilac ghost of Steve’s hand bloomed under his jaw. 

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

A sickened smile twisted his mouth. “Doesn’t it? It was always, _always_ going to be this way. It just looked a little different than I expected, in the end.” His gaze raked Steve’s torso again, but it was shame in his eyes this time. “I’d almost like you, you know, except for the whole physical abuse and abduction thing.”

Determined to keep the interview light until he wanted to change the tone, Steve smiled sheepishly. “That is kind of a deal breaker, isn’t it?”

“Don’t—don’t do that. Please.” Dragging a palm across his eyes, Ben blew out a shaky breath. “Just give me that, that _one_ ounce of respect, okay?” Both his fist and jaw were clenched, tenuous holds on composure. A part of Steve wanted to excuse himself, ashamed for causing and witnessing such distress, but it wasn’t the powerful part. That part was trembling in anticipation from having to work harder to maximize the situation.

“I’m sorry.” It was true – partially so, anyway – but the way he said it was a lie. “I can’t not do this, Ben.”

“I won’t.”

“I have a job.”

“I—Please don’t.”

“I have to protect this world.”

“What, from me?” 

From _us_. “If you’re a threat, then yes.”

XXX

He really should have slept. Hours later, he was pacing the lab (skating across the floor in his wheeled chair in time with the music), desperate for something to do. That insane toaster experiment was looking more appealing by the moment. But he had resisted both drinking – except for one or three tiny beers (martinis), hardly worth mentioning – and asking what Steve was doing – well, he had, but he’d also put an electronic deadbolt into JARVIS’s programming to prevent him from answering, so it hardly counted.

To keep his mind from wandering in the wrong directions, Tony had the feeds from his makeshift dungeon up. The man with the pink hair was being insultingly boring. A single attempt at the door that was an obligatory act rather than a hopeful one, and then he sat on the bed. Not sleeping, not talking or singing or humming, not even twiddling his thumbs; just sitting, for hours! The kid could probably give Coulson a run for his money in being characterless. 

No. Bad example.

Not that the girl had been doing anything more, considering she remained unconscious for hours. When she did wake up, though, Anna Darwin was much more active, running her hands across the walls, prodding single-mindedly but ineffectually at the door controls, climbing the shelving to probe ceiling for weak spots—it was fascinating, but short-lived. As soon as it was obvious that the room was secure, Darwin had sat in the corner so that her left shoulder pressed against the glass facing and her right did the same to the wall, and closed her eyes. She hadn’t moved since. At least Cohen fidgeted a little and breathed regularly.

On cue, Cohen lifted a hand to rub his jaw and gently press his fingertips into his throat. Tony had seen the bruise developing there several hours before. Had that been Steve’s doing? It must be, but that was out of character, considering Cohen looked a complete lightweight and had walked blindly into capture. Definitely not self-defense. Precaution? Surely Steve would never cause undue pain and suffering to a man with no proven history of malice or violence. He was better than that. Steve was the type to show mercy, to be gentle as far as possible, to let a guy down easy—

Fuck.

Dragging a hand through his hair in agitation, Tony groaned aloud and threw the feeds away. 

Dummy’s claw pricked up in quizzical concern. 

“Is there something wrong?” JARVIS enquired, condescendingly cognizant of the answer but wanting Tony to know that he knew. 

“Shut up, JARVIS.” Dummy’s servos wittered intrusively as he crowded Tony’s chair, twitching his camera in search of a source of distress. Just to be a bastard, Tony kicked back several feet. Unperturbed and uncomplainingly loyal, Dummy rolled after him, and Tony felt guilty. He _hated_ that feeling. There were some things that being rich and famous and a superhero just should have entailed, and never feeling like _that_ should have been among them.

The music faded again. “Sir—”

“What did I tell you, JARVIS?” Sleeplessness must be getting to him, because Tony could swear that patting Dummy’s mechanical joints calmed the bot. 

“Miss Lewis is approaching the lab.” If JARVIS had teeth, he would be gritting them. “Must I let her out of the stairwell?” 

“Is that a question? Are you turning into one of those repressive dystopian robot overlords? Yes! What the hell do you have against her, anyway?” 

JARVIS did not answer other than to cut off the music spitefully, but Darcy was more than capable of filling the expanding silence. No sooner had she opened the door than she opened her mouth: 

“Oh, good, you’re up! Does anybody sleep here? Kind of weird, practically a hotel, but nobody sleeps here, and it’s not one of those skin-crawly places where people go just to have sex with prostitutes, either. I mean, obviously. Are decorative beds a rich people thing? Anyway, I couldn’t sleep. Want to share my Skittles?” Not the least put off by Tony’s bemused lack of reply, Darcy plopped herself down on Dummy’s carriage and grabbed a piece of shoulder plating Tony had replaced on the Mark-42. Cursorily checking for its cleanliness, Darcy dumped out half of a commercial-sized bag into the concave underside, unrepentant for the few that spilled out onto the table and floor. 

“So,” she stuffed a few of the dropped candies into her mouth and continued thickly, “I watched _Rebel Without a Cause_ with Steve.”

There was no way Tony’s ventricles contracted prematurely at that name. Perhaps he was having a heart attack. Reaction to a drug. Acid reflux. _Something_. There was some other reason he sounded strangled when he said, “Oh?” 

Apparently oblivious, Darcy nodded, “I thought it might be a good transition movie, you know? Because it’s a classic, but it’s not smiley-smiley bullshit, either. I didn’t want to ruin him with Michael Bay, and we can work up to cinematic masterpieces like _Empire Strikes Back_ and _The Dark Knight_. Anyway,” she slumped back onto Dummy’s arm strut with a dramatic roll of her eyes, “it ended up being traumatic for everyone. Like, the whole time, Steve’s face was saying, ‘Is this what I fought the Nazis for? Drunk teenagers driving cars off cliffs for shits and giggles? Misery in the suburbs and cops killing kids?’ And for me, it was like _Romeo and Juliet_ all over again. I mean, her boyfriend kills himself falling off a goddamn cliff, and literally the same night, she tells this guy who survived the same dumb stunt that she loves him! But before that, he invited her to go to an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. I’m like, girl, that’s when you get the hell out of there; he is going to rape you! Man, I hated _Romeo and Juliet_. 

“James Dean is really hot, though.” She sighed regretfully, “He’s like an angsty child of money who rode away from it all on his motorcycle for a Jack Kerouac style odyssey and is more than a little dangerous in bed. You know? This much hot,” She spread her hands widely and looked gratified when Tony managed to hum a vague agreement. “But dude was messed up something wicked. Not just the character. The masochism and the death wish, in real life.” They nodded sagely together. Dummy had been shockingly compliant with Darcy’s disregard for his sentience, accepting her will as immutable after initially jerking his claw up in indignation. Now, the camera fixed on her imitated the bobbing of Darcy’s head. 

“The whole movie, I just wanted to hug him. ‘Course, his hair was probably all crunchy with stuff. Or maybe it would be greasy.” Darcy chewed a purple Skittle pensively, then shrugged, a bit dispirited from lacking the opportunity to test the consistency of James Dean’s hair. “It’s a shame he died.” 

Tony did not know what to add to that. Invisibly and inaudibly, JARVIS was curling his metaphorical lip at Darcy’s frivolity. The lens on Dummy’s electronic eye refocused repeatedly as he pressed closer to her, recognizing her melodramatic slump as the kind of pain he was supposed to prevent in Tony. 

Taking it in stride, Darcy absently stroked Dummy’s arm as she would a dog’s neck. “Anyway, that’s one fantasy shot to hell. I did not end the date climbing Captain America like a tree. And I don’t want to anymore, either.” 

There was clearly something wrong with her. Attempting to articulate as much, however, proved astonishingly problematic, and Tony got no further than scoffing and huffing indignantly. 

“I mean, he’s gorgeous, obviously,” Darcy concurred with a careless wave of the hand not driving Dummy to distraction. “And in that skintight uniform? _Edible_. Yes, please. But up close, he looks… He looks like he’s trying to not look miserable.”

Oh. _Oh_. It was obvious. There was no reason Tony oughtn’t to have recognized that look, that façade of contentment over a hollow ruin; it had been nearly constantly on Pepper’s face at the end. 

“You can’t have mind-blowing rabid sex with someone you want to make feel better, you know?” 

That was harder to stomach than it should have been. And, Jesus, was it a revelation. Sure, Steve was a nice guy, but Tony ate nice guys for breakfast. Practically always in a strictly professional, hostile takeover sort of way. He and Steve got along well enough – Steve said on basic cable that he considered them…well, Tony had interpreted it as ‘friends’ – but it had been difficult to do the buddy thing after coming to the realization that he wanted to get down on his knees and take Steve down to the root. Now in addition to that, Tony wanted be the little spoon against Steve’s chest, trailing his fingers through the translucent hair on Steve’s arms to soothe him until they both fell asleep. If Tony was somebody else entirely, he might suspect that he was in _like_ -like with Steve. 

“If you aren’t too busy, sir,” JARVIS interrupted icily.

“What?” Tony blinked dazedly. Both Darcy and Dummy were staring at him, she in anticipation and Dummy in barely concealed dismay.

“Are you okay? I’ve been saying your name.”

“Yeah, I… Yeah.”

“It’s okay,” she accepted the unoffered apology and good-naturedly nudged the makeshift candy bowl closer, spilling a dozen more Skittles. “I zone out all the time when Jane talks science.”

“Sir.”

Talking over JARVIS, Darcy continued, “I have my best thoughts when she’s talking. The second half of the plot of my Spuffy fic came from this one doozy she laid on me right after she hired me, explaining all the stuff she was trying to do.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” JARVIS threw up his figurative hands in frustration, “ _Spuffy_?”

Could shipping preferences actually come out in computer code? 

“I…” Tony swallowed a lot of things he couldn’t say aloud; Darcy was still watching expectantly. “I think I project my feelings onto my robots.”

Dummy cocked his eye quizzically, but Darcy just patted Tony’s hand gravely and struggled to smother a grin. “Okay. I should have brought alcohol, huh?”

“Yes, if you’re done babbling and encouraging Mr. Stark’s latent alcoholism, Miss Lewis,” hissed the voice from the walls (Darcy raised her arm to display her middle finger to the room). “As I have been trying to tell you, sir, Captain Rogers is interviewing one of our guests. Perhaps Miss Lewis should be sent to her quarters?”

“Oh, my Odin, JARVIS,” her head lolled back melodramatically, “I forgive you already!”

“There was nothing to forgive!” JARVIS retorted snappishly.

Her hand flipped nonchalantly, “Whatever.” With a last tickle under Dummy’s camera, Darcy hauled herself to her feet. “We’re not done, Mr. Stark. Next time, I’ll bring ice cream, and we’ll dish. First topic: Bruce Banner, AKA, Doctor Sexy. I have thoughts, and feelings as well. When you have time, give me a ring through you-know-who,” she stabbed a meaningful finger at the ceiling and added in a stage whisper, “He hates me ‘cause he wants me.”

He-who-shall-not-be-named refused to dignify that with a rise, and Darcy let herself out with a last cheery wave. The room yawned emptily. 

Tony hastily turned his back and retrieved the cell feeds. Sure enough, Steve (Honestly, JARVIS would have to do some scans, make sure all Tony’s internal organs were functioning at factory settings) was sitting on the cot with Pinky, and that was really closer than necessary, wasn’t it? Cohen should look a lot happier about that than he did. 

“Captain Rogers arrived less than three minutes ago.”

“Would you shut up so I can hear this?” JARVIS lapsed into miffed silence, but upped the volume on the live stream anyway. That was the beauty of associating primarily with robotic slaves.

‘…Please don’t.’

‘I have to protect this world.’

‘What, from me?’

‘If you’re a threat, then yes.’

God, they could be reading lines. If Tony was directing this movie, the main plot (gritty and topical political thriller) would have a wild undercurrent of homoerotic tension between the tortured but upright protagonist and the dishonest but sympathetic antagonist with whom Steve must reluctantly join forces. And he would be sleeping with the lead. 

On second thought, he might have cast himself in one too many roles in that metaphor.

On third thought, he’d return to it later. In private. 

On screen, Cohen finally broke the silence. ‘You actually believe I am, don’t you. A threat.’ It was not a question.

‘I have to assume you are. The last person I met who could rip holes in the sky was not friendly.’

‘You’ve met another?’ He had straightened in interest before freezing in the realization of his mistake. ‘Shit.’

Humming in agreement through an unethically attractive smirk, Steve cocked a knee up on the bed, further invading Cohen’s space. ‘His name was Loki. What’s yours?’

He had to admire the nerve on the kid, though; in spite of his blushing ears, he was glaring at Steve as he gritted out, ‘It’s Ben. Benjamin. Did I make such a fleeting impression before?’

Not blinking, Steve flicked the SHIELD file. ‘That’s what it says on your passport. Funny, though, the serial number is on file as belonging to Dr. Charles Edmondson, who is a fifty-four year old professor of theology specializing in Eastern Orthodoxy at Miami University.’ He examined a paper with a frown, and then flipped it around so Cohen could see it. ‘That doesn’t look like you, so it’s not Charles, either.’

The bruise bobbed in his neck, but Cohen’s eyes didn’t stray from Steve’s. ‘My name is Ben Cohen.’

‘From Washington.’ 

Doubt flickered in his eyes – was he supposed to have let that slip? – but Cohen seemed to decide there was no point in recanting; he nodded tersely. ‘I’d give you my rank and serial number, but I don’t have any.’

‘Would you like mine?’ The scriptwriter would have to have wracked his brain to find the appropriate way to communicate how scathingly Steve’s character said that – to communicate how useless that information was? Or to intimidate, deride? Maybe the character he was playing would do something like that. That was a man who would have struck an unarmed man without provocation, for the viewers’ visual impact at the blow and the bruise. 

‘Tell me something, then, Ben.’ Steve closed the file and tapped it against his palm pensively. ‘You and your friend fell out of the sky in Russia. You stole a car from a gas station attendant to get to the airport, and you flew to Arizona. There, you rented a car and started a slow, circuitous journey toward Canada. Someone might wonder why someone like you, who has the power to just pop black holes into and out of existence – and I’ve been assured that’s very difficult, nearly impossible, by people who do nothing but the seemingly impossible – why you wouldn’t just start in Arizona, or Minnesota, or wherever was your final destination.

‘But I asked you where you were going and I don’t think you lied. So, why are you wandering?’ His head tipped to the side in honest perplexity. Cohen didn’t answer, and Steve let the silence spiral for a long minute (keeping Tony on tenterhooks) before speculating aloud. ‘Maybe you’re a sightseer. A very disorganized one, but it’s possible. Someone with your sheer power,’ – Cohen looked away, discomfited, though Tony couldn’t imagine why – ‘must be able to be, and not worry about it. That would explain the companion, too.

‘But I don’t think that’s it. You could be a really careless tourist on this planet, Ben Cohen, but you’re not. I don’t know what you are, and I don’t know what you intend here, but I know why you left wherever you came from.’

‘Yeah?’ Cohen lifted his chin in challenge. ‘Why?’

Steve stood, forcing Cohen to look up at him, reasserting his control; his voice was calm and assured. ‘You ran. Something’s chasing you. Or it was. Are you sure you escaped entirely?’

He had gone very still during Steve’s supposition, ashen-faced in…fear? And came back to the conversation slowly. ‘I must have missed the question. Was there one?’ Well, whoever he was, they had certainly underestimated the balls on this kid. 

Unperturbed, Steve smiled. ‘There was, but you answered it already. You flinched,” he clarified, when Cohen’s brows contracted in a silent question. ‘When I talked about your abilities.’

Ben understood as little as Tony did, because he stopped Steve as he turned to leave, blurting, ‘So? What—Tell me what that means.’

‘If you were just travelling,’ Steve answered softly (Tony leaned forward, rapt), ‘you wouldn’t have done that. You flinched. You’re afraid of, or ashamed of, what you do. So, you wouldn’t use it lightly. There was a greater evil that forced your hand.’ 

After a moment of silent (pregnant) staring, Steve turned his back and activated the biometric scanner. He didn’t step through immediately when the door slid open, however. The set of his shoulders made Tony wish he could see Steve’s face, know what he was thinking.

‘I really shouldn’t be your enemy.’ He barely caught the whisper. Furiously, Tony manually cranked the volume as high as it would go. ‘I don’t want to be.’ Could Cohen even hear with Steve facing away like that?

‘I’m not. Steve—’ His plaintive entreaty ended in an impotent grasp on his bed sheets.

Steve’s shoulders straightened resolutely. ‘Let JARVIS know if you decide to tell me your name, or if you need to use the facilities.’ And he walked out. A perfect photo finish. 

Tony would let the shot linger on a wide angle, impressing the audience with the prisoner’s isolation and implying the relief of having even hostile company. Then it would be a quick cut to something in jarring contrast. Or would it be a parallel? It would make better plot sense to associate if warden and ward had their isolation in common. 

No, he didn’t want to write the fucking thing. It was director, not the screenwriter, who had the privilege of sleeping with the cast. When did it all get so fucking complicated? There were too many hats, too many roles that he had taken to juggling. _Their_ lives were all so straightforward, and Tony’s was an incessant series of switchbacks and masks and character maintenance. If there even was a person left beneath all the show and swagger, he wouldn’t have a name or a face, let alone family or friends. 

Cohen had given up; he kicked off his shoes and crawled under the covers, facing the wall. For what must have been the first time in a week, Tony wanted to sleep, too; surrender to the undertow. In an alarming rush of empathy, he brought the lights down in the containment room. Startled as much by the change as Tony was, Cohen sat up and looked around for whoever or whatever was watching. 

The bed awaiting him was much bigger, and cold from inconstant use. It was the only place to go, though; the cot that was usually in his lab had been usurped for someone else. 

‘Steve?’ Cohen’s voice was small and devastatingly hopeful. ‘Was that you?’ 

Tony faltered halfway out of his chair, not sure what he was feeling but certain he did not want to feel it at all. He shut off the video completely before he heard any more. The lights glared unkindly as he rushed to the elevator. “Tell him it was you, JARVIS.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy Mary, that was a lot. Longest so far by a good bit, in fact. 
> 
> This chapter was meant to be five sections, but these first two just ballooned out of control, so the bits with Jane and Bruce, Clint and Natasha, and Tony with Anna Darwin will be in the next one. 
> 
> At the very beginning, there's a brief reference to St. Patrick's Cathedral. I don't know whether it is actually visible from where the Tower is located in the city per _The Avengers_ , but I wanted to be able to name a landmark rather than try to throw in an invented church building. Suffice it to say that Steve feels guilty for as yet undisclosed but hinted at reasons, and sanctified places remind him of that guilt. (Do I spot character development!?) 
> 
> (The answer is yes.)


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, an update! The next chapter is also close to completion, but my creativity comes in unpredictable little flash floods. I know this girl who participated in that thing where you write a novel in a month, and I have no idea how anybody could do that. This isn't even an F. Scott Fitzgerald-length novel and I'm pretty sure I could have produced a tiny human in less time than it has required so far. 
> 
> Warning for suicidal ideation.

By the time he had returned to the Tower, Clint had progressed through the raging and into the hollow and apathetic phase of his anger. It shouldn’t have _mattered_ , but it did. It hurt more than he was willing to acknowledge that Steve didn’t trust him. He wasn’t even taking orders from Cap – not that it would have mattered; Clint had taken orders from men he didn’t like and didn’t respect, and who felt the same about him. Certainly he and Fury didn’t get on well.

But he didn’t feel like puzzling over why, exactly, he cared what Rogers thought of him. 

The agent who drove him back to the tower might have said something, but Clint did not hear it. The emptiness yawning inside him was matched by an exterior isolation. Everything seemed so very far away, and Clint felt so very, very small.

Natasha had once asked him what he was thinking and he had told her his mind was completely blank. She had scoffed, told him that wasn’t possible, stop being so cliché. And perhaps it had been clichéd, but to be fair, it had been a phenomenal orgasm.

Maybe he should have gone to her after— 

After, anyway.

Muscle memory was enough to get him back to the living room, but he couldn’t remember why he would have wanted to be there. Someone was walking toward him from the elevator – not masculine and ridiculously loud, so either that woman scientist or her assistant – and Clint didn’t feel like seeing either. Civilians, though – avoiding them was all too simple. It was the girl, Darcy, wandering around with some purpose, but Clint could not bring himself to care what.

He went to his room, stripped out of his clothes, stood under the shower faucet for a long time with an empty head. Not thinking ironically took a lot of mental effort. There were specters haunting the border between his brain and his skull; Clint could hear them murmuring. A few were solid things, snorting and pawing anxiously along the perimeter. They were more easily ignored for being so noisy.

The dangerous ones kept to the shadows – the whisper men. They were dark and seductive, not trying to get in but inviting Clint to come out.

Clint was not tired but he laid down in his bed, gradually willed his breathing into a mechanical consistency. It would only take six hours to convince someone that Clint was rested. Waiting was something he did extremely well – anyone can become a marksman, but the patience to sit in a sniper’s nest for days on end was an innate ability that determined one’s aptitude for the field – and he wouldn’t jeopardize his viability for missions with something as trivial as not spending the requisite hours in his bed. JARVIS might be able to tell the difference between actual slumber and Clint’s playacting, but he doubted the SHIELD psychiatrists and handlers would dig that deep.

Nobody had ever accused Clint of being particularly clever, but he reckoned that he must have some sort of mental acuity that others lacked. For all his genius, Tony Stark could hardly remain still and quiet for five minutes, let alone the hours that a particular kill shot might demand. Maybe Bruce could calm himself, but he could not absorb the impact of external intrusions adequately.

Clint, on the other hand, could while away the minutes like seconds with only the diversion of keeping his own shifting thoughts at bay. And if he was indulging, yielding with wanton abandon and consumptive greed to _want_ , Clint listened to the whisper men.

They had been in his head as long as Clint could remember. In fact, they were his oldest memory, from when he must have been about four. And he knew that was sick. It was all sick, sick, _sick_ , and his thus-far consistent refusal was no less so. He knew that. He had known that for almost as long as he’d been aware of them. That knowledge made the whole affair all the more…enjoyable, if that was the word.

Nobody else knew, Clint was confident of that. He was very good at faking deafness, if it was necessary – an ability and a judgment learned in childhood. ‘How do you feel, Clinton?’ Mrs. Bratteli had always asked, for years – or maybe it was just two.

Yes, ma’am, I’m good, ma’am. 

I’m fine, ma’am. 

Piss off, ma’am.

And then she wasn’t there to ask anymore. Sometimes Clint had missed that, during the years nobody much bothered with his birth name, but not once the full complement of the SHIELD psychiatric department was eagerly making up the years of difference.

But not a single one of them knew the right questions to ask. Or rather, Clint knew exactly what to say that they never properly worried. The key was not to appear overly cheerful: It would be at best unsettling and at worst macabre, given his vocation, if he didn’t get a little conflicted and disenchanted, from time to time. So, he appropriately feigned the struggle of seeing his victims living their lives, smiles and frowns and tears on their unsuspecting faces; he recounted invented but entirely plausible nightmares about his kills, with the obligatory reluctance of the mercenary he was. Nothing ever severe enough to incite concern over his fitness for jobs, just enough to abate suspicion of his being overly cavalier about the nature of the work.

The whisper men were not the reason Clint had been put on Steve-sitting duty instead of on the job to which he was best suited. But he wouldn’t have even that much if either Dr. Roopali or _Helen_ , as Dr. Agarwal insisted, knew about them.

When he was young, they were equally childish. It was always a gun to the temple, never mind that the only gun Clint had ever seen was his father’s Winchester and there was no way he would be able to reach the trigger while the barrel was pointing anywhere useful. Still, it was fun to think up ways around that little predicament.

In a few years, he saw a movie with Barney in which a man hung himself. Clint could remember nothing of the plot, but could picture behind his closed eyelids the mannequin swinging on the rope and hear with perfect clarity the tolling of bells. (Perhaps he had done it in a church tower?) Without thinking, he’d told his brother how very neat that was; there wouldn’t be a single drop of blood to clean. Barney must have thought he was talking about the effects, because he hadn’t gotten upset until he found Clint wearing a noose fashioned out of twine.

For a long time, films fueled Clint’s fantasies –women in skimpy tank tops and suicides were equally exciting. The former was, of course, much more acceptable. Boys were allowed to snigger together over their first discussions of sex and chase the girls around the broken swing set just to hear them squeal. Near ideation of rape was perfectly _normal_ but doodle stick figures shooting themselves, throwing themselves from buildings, and otherwise ending up in garishly bright pools of blood in the margins of your homework, and you got sent to the nurse. 

Clint stopped doing that and he and Barney left school before there was a follow-up to the first, borderline hysterical interview with the nurse. Nobody cared what was going on inside his head for the decade Clint spent becoming the unofficial best shot in six states with a rifle and in the whole Midwest with a bow. When the government started courting him, the agent – Clint couldn’t remember his name, but he had twisted his wedding ring a lot and squinted against the sun even while his sunglasses were perched on his head or in his jacket pocket – asked twice why he preferred the bow. He hadn’t told him the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway.

It wasn’t a lie that Clint appreciated the drama of such an unusual weapon; arrows had a certain visual oomph that long-range rounds simply couldn’t match. But the honest truth was that a gun was too easily turned back on the hand that held it.

Clint shifted his leg, the sheets like liquid, and sighed in his pantomime sleep. It was the little details that would keep the charade together if anyone looked into his habits.

Drowning would be sanitary, too – a baptismal cleansing. Several times in close quarter combat, Clint had been choked. It had been like his ribs had been ripped open and something hot and rough stuffed into the scant spaces around his lungs and heart while molten metal poured over his forehead. He wondered if asphyxiation would feel as heated and prickly if cool water was flooding the vessels gaping for air. How long would he be able to taste it on his tongue? How long could he keep still, curb the instinctual struggle to survive—or would he shackle his limbs, perhaps to a weight, the better to experience the burn and the salve?

Clint had never acted, and he didn’t think he ever would. These visions were half escapist, half punitive. Dead would be good – quiet, calm, peaceful – and he hadn’t earned that, never could earn that. He deserved every second of a long life filled with long waits in which he would like nothing better than serenity, and find none.

Five hours left.

XXX

“Hörgr. How the fuck do you say that? Whore-gr? Ho-rigger? Fucking Vikings.” She went to make a note and her pencil had gone missing, the third one in the last five hours. 

The thing was, Jane was very good at her job. She had been good at her job and then she accidentally hit a temporarily mortal Norse god with her van and suddenly people paid attention. But astrophysics were not huge in the mainstream consciousness – even with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, darling of the _Daily Show_ and mildly geeky hipsters because of his awesome Seventies ‘stache, giving a likable name and face to the discipline – so Jane knew that she was ‘the star-crossed lover’ to everyone who didn’t understand quantum theory. 

And, yes, sometimes she egged herself on with the carrot of fucking six feet and three inches of phenomenally built studmuffin, but Jane had been determined to put her name on a coherent and achievable proposal for faster-than-light travel since she had first seen the Millennium Falcon make the jump to light speed. The Selvig-Foster Hypothesis, it’d be called – until Tony Stark felt he was being overshadowed and built some sort of gizmo, underpinned by the newly termed Selvig-Foster Theorem. She was always going to be the first name in hyper-travel, Thor or not.

And the Bifrost was her best lead as to figuring it out. Prehistoric Norsemen had gotten it right about the existence of Asgard, so Jane was willing to give what little they had recorded about the rest of their belief system the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who looked in on her reading obsessively every source of information on the Norse pantheon and assumed she was brushing up for a second date was stereotyping and more than likely a narrow-minded idiot.

The biggest obstacle she foresaw was the disparity of power source. Magic was one of the basic components of the Asgardian universe, though if the Tesseract thing the bastards at SHIELD had only let her in on after it was out of the world was any indication, there were finite sources of the as near as makes no difference infinite power required for a structure like the Bifrost. Unless Earth could somehow acquire and utilize one of those, which she judged as highly unlikely, they would have to rely on a quantum process to power a portal.

Of course, that was all application; Jane had to understand the theory first, particularly the bit where Odin could send the Bifrost anywhere he damn well pleased without worrying about whether there was a complementary terminal on the other end. Her best guess at this point was that the operator’s intentions somehow directed the structure.

Hence, she was feverishly scouring the more insane annals of the Internet to find out how to present a sacrifice to the Norse gods. Unfortunately, it seemed that would probably require some blood.

Jane became aware that someone had left a plate of food by her knee when she was eating it, so Darcy had probably checked in on her at some point, but only the one time and it had probably been less than twenty-four hours since she had last slept. Automatically, she looked around for her phone – under an illustrated children’s encyclopedia of Norse deities Erik had given her as a gag gift – to send a thank-you text. 

After a second, she sent another: _Where do you get goat meat/blood?_

Well, that’s what she meant, anyway; autocorrect changed it to _Were do you get goat men/blood?_ Surely Darcy would understand.

It probably wasn’t much later – though Jane had a hard time keeping track of minutes and hours when she was elbows-deep in data – when Darcy burst into the room. 

“Have you finally cracked?” she demanded, brandishing her phone as evidence. “Jane, you are the last normal person in this tower, _don’t_ tell me that Pepper is normal because obviously no, I need somebody to watch _Firefly_ and paint my toenails with on Saturday nights. You cannot have a goat man _or_ a regular goat. What do you want with a goat?”

“Do you think a Jewish deli would have it?”

“I think they have a thing about blood, right? Or is it milk? Whatever – Jane, if you want a lamb kebab, just ask JARVIS, I’m pretty sure he can, like, magically produce food out of thin air.”

“You can’t make things out of thin air, Darcy.”

“Nuh-uh, you totally can. Air is made up of molecules, which are in food.” She looked very proud of herself for this knowledge.

Jane gaped. “No—okay, but—first of all, the _density_ of—you know what, forget it. I don’t think I’m going to eat it. I’m trying to make a sacrifice, to communicate with Asgard.” 

To her credit, Darcy rolled with the punches like a pro and changed tacks after only the shortest of pauses. “Okay, you need a goat. Why a goat?”

The blush burned in her cheeks against Jane’s will. “They’re, uh. They’re kind of associated with Thor.”

“In completely kosher ways, I hope. Otherwise, we are going to have a long, long chat, Jane Foster. All right, so, goat. Anything else?”

“Well, it seems like pretty much anything can be a sacrifice.” Jane ran a hand haphazardly through her hair, and two pencils dropped into her lap. “Mostly food, but also things like vows and hair trimmings.” They shared a moment of ‘ew’ over that.

“I’m thinking Pop Tarts should be in on this thing, don’t you?”

“And maybe a boilermaker. He mentioned he really liked those.”

“Well, I don’t need to make a run for booze, that’s for sure. Do we need candles or some spiritual junk like that? Are we going to have to wear special clothes?” Jane loved Darcy for just inviting herself into this crazy project.

“I’m running on the assumption that intention is a huge part of this thing. Like, I don’t know how to dedicate an altar to a Norse god, but I’m going to wing it on pure, bullheaded whatever. I do think we need a bunch of rocks for it, though.” She staggered to her feet, which pricked painfully as the blood finally began flowing through her toes again. “It might take a lot of willpower, so we’re going to have to convince everybody to come to the blót.”

“Jane, I will do a lot of things for you, but I bloat enough around my periods as it is.”

“No, no, it’s just the word for the sacrifice-feast thing. I’m pretty sure that’s how you pronounce it.”

Darcy was still squinting her eyes in suspicion, but she appeared willing to take Jane’s word for it for now. “So, it’s just Sunday dinner? No, we’ve definitely got to do it on a Thursday.” She nodded decisively. “Are we making blood sausages or something?”

“No, we sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on ourselves.”

There were several beats of silence in which Darcy stared at Jane, who refused to apologize. “Fine,” she threw up her hands in exasperation. “I’m doing this for you. And because I was going to make team dinners a thing anyway; might as well break the ice with a pagan ritual involving blood sacrifice. At least it isn’t a virgin. That would be a terrible waste of Captain America.”

Jane stopped in the futile process of ordering her research. “No! You don’t think he is, do you?”

“Oh, he totally is,” Darcy scoffed confidently. “Nobody who’s had naked orgasms with another person blushes that much when confronted with a v-neck.”

This made no sense at all. “But he’s so pretty. He has a _uniform_! Is he gay? Oh, my God – we need to get him to a gay bar _now_. This cannot continue.”

“Okay, Janey, we’ll do that,” Darcy soothed with the ease of long practice. “Let’s just lie down a sec first, okay?”

“He has to wear the uniform,” Jane insisted seriously. “They’ll eat him up.” 

Maybe it had been a while since she had slept.

“Come on, into bed. Just a little nap before we take Steve out, all right? You want to be alert for his lap dances, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Jane breathed, allowing Darcy to coax her beneath the covers. “He’ll be so happy, he’ll be totally okay with this sacrifice thing. Even the goat blood.”

Darcy rolled her eyes, but Jane was hardly aware of it. “Yes, exactly. Captain Catholic will definitely love the idea of pagan worship after he’s gotten a blowjob from a guy wearing pink glitter.”

Jane hummed happily and let her eyelids drift shut. Now, _that_ made perfect sense.

XXX

Natasha waited for Fury’s message with the patience of a reptile sunning itself in preparation for a deadly attack. There was no doubt that there was some sort of subterfuge to be done in the near future; there was no way Fury had simply given up two enemy operatives of only partially known capabilities to an insubordinate deputy. 

The communiqué would almost certainly come in person, but not verbally if delivered in the Tower – JARVIS was always there, always listening. Given the potential fallout of this gamble, Natasha expected it would come soon, and likely with Clint, as he was the other operative with whom she was in contact most often. In any case, there was no reason to lose sleep sitting by the phone; Clint would deliver the message in as timely and discreet a manner as befitted the situation. 

She was a bit disappointed when she woke up alone.

“How are our guests?”

“Good morning, Miss Romanova. Both Mr. Cohen and Ms. Darwin are awake and well. Captain Rogers spoke with Mr. Cohen just moments ago. I took the liberty of putting the security footage into your tablet’s media library.”

“Thank you, JARVIS.” It was not necessary, but it was more concise than explaining how much she admired his efficiency.

He did not volunteer the information and Natasha did not ask after Clint’s whereabouts. If he was in the Tower, the number of places he might be was extremely small; it would almost be faster to check them personally.

With the tablet in hand, she went to the communal kitchen. Fully staffed, it could have fed at least a hundred quite easily, but she hadn’t seen any appliance except the microwave and refrigerator put to use. As expected, Clint had been up with the dawn and took advantage of the gym if the dampness of his shirt and hair were any indication.

Tossing a bottle of orange juice her way, Clint announced, “It happened again.”

“I don’t know why it’s such a big deal to you. As I recall—”

“Don’t bring up Amsterdam! I told you, it’s not the same.”

“Would you feel better if I came with you?”

Clint rolled his eyes at the innuendo. “Har. In Amsterdam, everybody gave their consent. I was ordered into these quarters, and I wasn’t allowed to opt out of Big Brother watching me rub one out.”

“I’m sure JARVIS could not care less about what you do with your dick.”

Harrumphing his suspicion, Clint drummed a spoon against his palm and waited for his oatmeal to cook. Even through the ruddy glow of exertion, he looked peaky, as he had for weeks, though JARVIS had assured her that he was physically well. There were bruises on his forearms from his bowstring, fresh in the middle but faded to yellow and green about the edges. Standing there, waiting expectantly for his food, he suddenly struck her as one of those dogs with eyes just a bit too far apart and nose just a bit too snubbed and limbs just a bit too stocky and bowed to be considered cute, but absurdly loveable just the same. 

That was ridiculous, of course; Clint was competent and plainly fine, albeit a little tired, and there was absolutely no reason for her to feel _responsible_ for him in the safety of Stark’s couture kitchen.

“Have I got something on my face?”

Natasha shook her head and changed the subject. “Steve talked to Cohen.”

“Anything good?”

“Not a great angle, but he’s definitely not in Loki’s class of supervillain.”

“Sane, then?” Clint’s smirk didn’t reach his eyes quite right.

“So far. What’s your take?”

“You’ve seen my report.”

Obviously. “Your gut instinct,” she prompted him.

He folded his arms and shrugged. “They’re not really doing anything except exactly what we would do if we got zapped into Siberia with no contacts and no objective – stole the necessities and got back to what they know, if Cohen wasn’t lying about Washington. I don’t even know if I would classify them as villains yet; from what I’ve heard so far, they’re more harmless than anyone in this building and at least half of SHIELD.” 

An arched brow: “You’d let them go?”

His only response was a withering look.

Holding up the tablet, she questioned, “You don’t want to see for yourself?”

He shrugged apathetically. “I trust you. Steve didn’t talk to Darwin?”

“Not so far as I know.”

Clint turned his back to wash his bowl and spoon, but she could hear his frown. “Why not? She woke up, didn’t she?”

“Miss Darwin is awake,” JARVIS confirmed when Natasha did not. “I can tell you the highlights of her activity, or show you the security videos.” 

But he knew her and immediately pulled it up on the tablet. Clint glanced over periodically at Darwin’s reconnaissance but quickly grew bored with her long period of dormancy. 

“Is Cap going to be walking them to the toilet or will he accept a chemical one from SHIELD?”

“I don’t think there were chemical toilets in the Forties,” Natasha noted drily. “But he didn’t think this through particularly well, anyway.”

“Nope.” Clint exaggerated the plosive consonant to make his feelings plain. The way he was drying his dishes so fastidiously was more honest.

She would – she _would_ – have asked directly after his emotional state, but movement on the feeds tore her attention away. Darwin had stood up, the first time in at least four hours, and turned to wait patiently at the glass. Before they could speculate at the provocation, Stark walked onscreen.

“Please tell me he isn’t going to talk to them,” Clint groaned over her shoulder. “That’s all we need.”

Initially, Stark appeared more interested in Cohen, but by leaning forward in clear invitation for attention, Darwin drew his eye. He said something he no doubt considered witty, but she didn’t respond. She copied his stance, clasping her hands behind her back and projecting her weight forward onto the balls of her feet. Stark tilted his head; she tilted hers. Together, they shifted in annoyance, crossing their arms and glaring.

‘Very funny,’ Stark sniffed. ‘Really mature.’

‘Funny,’ she repeated. ‘Fun-ny. Fuh-knee. Fuh-honey. Funny! _Funny_.” Darwin beamed; after exaggerated modulation, this last one had come out in Tony’s voice. If Natasha hadn’t seen Darwin’s lips moving, she would have staked her life on Stark having uttered it.

‘That’s a neat trick.’

“Don’t encourage her!”

Natasha hushed him with a hand on Clint’s wrist, but Darwin didn’t echo Stark again. Apropos of nothing, she held up her hands for careful examination. From the camera inside the storeroom, Stark’s wary expression was just visible.

Slowly and deliberately, Darwin raised her flattened hands over her head, the tips of her middle fingers barely touching, thumbs sticking up like giraffe horns. Gaze locked with Stark’s, she lowered them.

“Holy shit.”

Clint’s was an appropriate reaction, all things considered. They had seen a lot of the worst during their time with SHIELD. Natasha had a much longer career than Clint, and there were disturbing gaps in her memory that could have contained any number of classified horrors, or perhaps something more dangerous to her former masters, but both of their experiences were largely limited to blood; the strange was usually regulated to a completely different division.

So, while she had seen people skinned alive and once murdered a man who wore the facial bones of his most recent kill to traumatize his present victim, neither was an especially preparatory schooling for Anna Darwin turning into Tony Stark behind the whimsical curtain of her descending hands. 

The real thing had gone rigid, his face a mask of shock. With pleasure, the – perfect, identical, _indistinguishable_ – facsimile studied his hands again, now a little broader and darker, and used them to map his new hair and cheekbones and stroke the strap of his slightly overgrown goatee. He rolled his neck and shoulders luxuriantly, preening under Stark’s furious efforts to comprehend what, exactly, had happened.

“Why isn’t he leaving?” Clint demanded in a hiss, his tension palpable pressed against her shoulder. “Is he _insane_?”

“It’s _Stark_.”

Onscreen, Tony could neither prevent his hands from clenching into fists nor force his legs to move as not-Tony pulled out the neck of their twin shirts to peer at the arc reactor lighting up his copy of their face. Letting the collar go, he looked up with concern. ‘Can you sleep? Do you keep seeing the darkness, too?’

There was a glitch in the tape that made his head shake violently for a bare second – but JARVIS _did not_ glitch, and Stark flinched away from the unnatural movement, hands raised instinctively to fire absent repulsors. 

‘It’s so quiet out there,’ he murmured abstractedly, as though unaware of the spasm. ‘So oppressively silent.’ 

Another digital twitch wracked him; when it subsided, blood slowly began to drip from his nose.

The lab door was silent when it opened, but Steve’s boots were perfectly audible as he speed-walked in at a fairly Olympic pace. Natasha wished she could see his expression; Tony both lowered his hands and stepped away from the glass without further instruction.

‘Hey, Cap, I—’

‘Out. Now.’

Stark’s face darkened and then closed off, but he complied with his mouth shut.

Steve turned to the Stark in the cage. In the silence, he sniffed a little and smeared red across his cheek with a careless hand.

‘Do you need anything, Ms. Darwin? Food, water, lavatory?’ His tone made clear that he would not be intimidated by magic tricks. It would be nearly impossible with someone who was expecting to be disconcerted, anyway.

Faster than was possible, she was back, as though she had not been anyone else. No matter how much JARVIS would slow the video down for her, there was never any observable transition state.

‘No.’ When Steve started to leave, she amended to ‘Not yet.’

He nodded in acknowledgement and marched off screen. The commotion had attracted Cohen’s attention, and he was plastered against the tiny window in his cell door. Whatever he was saying was inaudible, but from what little was visible of his shoulder, it seemed he was smacking the door in his attempt to gain Steve’s notice. It was pitiful. And amusing, given that he acted the polar opposite of Darwin’s unearned cocky swagger.

“You ever seen anything like that?” Clint finally asked.

“Not without chemical aid.”

They replayed the video. Darwin was there and then she was Tony Stark before she came back

“Shape shifter?” Clint pressed his sweaty head into the crook of her neck.

Natasha pushed him away before she realized it might have been better to accept the contact. Then again, obvious attempts to comfort might be more antagonizing than pretending everything was normal. “You don’t really think that.”

“No,” he agreed, scraping his spoon against the bottom of the bowl.

“Loki did a similar thing.” She knew he had seen the footage from the containment cell. She had seen his paper targets all bore Loki’s maniacal grin.

He didn’t react, just turned to the sink and washed his breakfast dishes again, like he had missed something the first time. “Going to recommend I get off this gig?”

“No.”

“I wish you would. I’m not a babysitter. I’m not useful here unless Cap gives the kill order. How likely do you think that is?”

“Go take a shower.”

Tossing down the dishtowel with a snort, Clint started to leave. Natasha grabbed his wrist and squeezed the bruise to get his attention. “Are you still with me?”

“My head’s fine, Tash.” Clint waited until she released him. His eyes were shuttered but not empty, so she did. He left, and Natasha wished that the objectively more important things mattered more to her. 

She would have to find an excuse to get out of the Tower and inform Fury of these developments with the detainees. If that hastened the campaign of subterfuge that must surely be starting soon, then so be it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't recall if I wrote the line about Clint being "very good at faking deafness" before or after I learned that the character is actually deaf in the comics. If before, I just meant that he deflects questions about his mental health very well, and if after, I meant that and a little nod to the comic. 
> 
> This story is not about Clint getting past his serious issues and very poor coping mechanisms, but I promise that there will be no suicide attempts from him.
> 
> As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the term 'whisper men' was lifted from _Doctor Who_. Does Clint call them that because he's a secret fan? That's between me and my headcanon.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had to up the rating because of the not-so-sexy sexytimes in this chapter. Trigger warnings for sort-of prostitution, but it's completely consensual and non-exploitative. Well, as much as prostitution can be non-exploitative.
> 
> Much more pertinent trigger warnings for psychological torture at the end of the chapter.

Tony was not the sort to run to people with his problems. Never had been, never could be, not even when he had tried halfheartedly for Pepper. If someone asked point-blank, he still couldn’t have admitted how close Darwin’s little performance art piece struck to home.

He had trouble sleeping sometimes and yeah, maybe it had gotten worse after Afghanistan and Obie and hadn’t gotten better since. So, what?

Just to prove how not rattled he was, he bathed, dressed in bespoke Armani, took a Lamborghini out to a hotel, and called an escort service. Throwing a party and picking between a bunch of sycophant starlets and socialites was more effort than he was willing to put into the simple business of a fuck. 

It was good, really. Why shouldn’t he spend his money that way? He made sure on a regular basis that the whole company, if it could be called that, was staying as legal as a high class virtual whorehouse could and all its whores were legally adults, freely consenting, and properly compensated. Grad students had to pay off college loans somehow.

But he hadn’t been too surprised to find that Evan still worked there. It paid better than a whole lot of jobs, especially the kind of stuff Evan was apparently willing to do for his paycheck. Tony had bought quite a few hours from him back before Afghanistan, because Pepper and Stane had taken him aside to gently suggest that it would be better for everybody involved that he kept his flexible sexuality as private as a Stark was capable of doing.

The wait between order and delivery was so short that Tony didn’t have time to get even slightly tipsy.

“Long time, no see, Mr. Stark.” Evan had cut his hair very short and it looked darker than Tony remembered. He was broader, too, and wore an almost-beard, but that was nice.

“Yeah, I’ve been busy.”

Shrugging out of his jacket – he knew Tony didn’t care to play at seduction – Evan smiled again. “I know.”

It suddenly occurred to Tony that he hadn’t had proper sex with anybody but Pepper since the arc reactor. That was incredible, even to the man who had lived it, but first he had been brooding and then he had been paranoid about exposing fragility. He had kept up appearances, of course; no use letting people know he was sheltering a weakness, and blowjobs could be fairly excellent in the right mouth.

Reading this hesitation correctly, Even refrained from their customary dive into the fun bit. He gestured to Tony’s tumbler. “Mind if I fix myself a drink?”

Tony waved a hand toward the suite bar, taking a swallow of his bourbon to excuse his inexplicable silence.

“Are we waiting on someone else?”

“No.” He wasn’t even sure he could show Evan.

Evan still drank gin and tonics, apparently. “Did you want a top off?” he offered diffidently, which Tony accepted on principle.

“What’s the plan, then?” Leaning against the countertop, he eyed Tony with more shrewdness than had any of the eight psychoanalysts Tony had been forced to see before he left home. “You don’t want to talk, not ever. You’re not shy about some kink, are you?”

Tony drained his third glass and dropped it carelessly on a side table. “I’m going to fuck you. You still prep ahead?”

“I didn’t think so and of course I do.” Evan took a last sip of his own drink and stepped closer. “How do you want me?”

“Fucked out and sloppy. Lose your pants.”

Obedient, Evan kicked off his shoes and stripped to his undershirt, because he knew Tony liked to pull that up and use it to tangle his hands over his head. There was a new, stupid tattoo on his right bicep, to balance with the stupid bull’s head on his left. It seemed he could still bring himself to full attention at will, too, which Tony appreciated.

Unfortunately, he also continued to insist on the good business practice of condoms both ways. On his knees, Tony ripped open the proffered foil packet and dragged it down Evan’s cock, the quicker to put it on his tongue and _stop thinking_. His gag reflex made a brief appearance that Tony ignored in favor of achieving the goal of his nose pressed into Evan’s groin. Always anticipating, Evan held him there with a firm hand at the base of his skull until Tony’s eyes were watering.

“Fuck, you’ve still got it.” Evan thrust down his throat until Tony’s vision was just getting spotty and then pulled back to let him breathe. “All those people bending over for you, when’d you get time to learn how to suck cock so well?” 

It had been some junior at MIT who had been delighted at his pedophilic good fortunes, but Evan didn’t need to know that. Instead of answering, Tony simultaneously pumped Evan’s cock with one hand, suckled his balls, and stuck two spit-slicked fingers from the other up his loosened ass.

“ _Jesus_ , you in some kind of hurry?”

For that, Tony brought him to the edge twice before dragging the tips of his four fingers over Evan’s prostate and finally letting him come buried to hilt in his mouth. Since he was never allowed to swallow, Tony had always taken a facial before – but then, he had always been naked before and he hadn’t gone out in public in come-flecked clothing since the Nineties.

Stroking a hand against Tony’s smarting scalp, Evan chuckled breathlessly. “Bed?”

Tony made a noise in agreement but rested his forehead against Evan’s hip for a moment with his eyes closed. If he dragged the next part out long enough, would he be able to sleep more than a couple hours that night?

The grounding warmth of the hand in his hair stayed until Tony surged to his feet and used the convenient t-shirt to drag Evan’s mouth down to his. If Evan minded having his toes stepped on as they stumbled backwards, he didn’t say anything. Tony let him go with one last scrape of teeth across his stubbly chin only to push him back onto the bed. 

“Back or front?” Out of seemingly nowhere, Evan produced another condom and a sachet of lube. If the Boy Scouts gave a merit badge for preparedness and safe sexual practices, he would be its most deserving recipient.

But now Tony was noticing that Evan had the same general body type and look as Steve and his eyes were only a few shades off the color of Steve’s. He was Steve if Steve had been born in 1988 and got influenced by grunge instead of big band and sometimes had clients/patrons who wanted to play a rape scene. Which was not at all where this had been meant to go. 

Figuring his shirttails were a lost cause, Tony pushed his trousers and briefs down just far enough to not stain them as he slicked the condom. “Hands and knees. Get the pillows.”

Watching the muscles over Evan’s back tremble instead of the look on his face as he presented himself for the taking, Tony pretended he was only being cautious about the arc reactor.

XXX

Hill tried to tell her that Fury wasn’t in his office. Natasha was normally ambivalent to Hill, but despite being a damn fine agent, she was a bureaucrat first. Bureaucrats only ever saw the fallout of their decisions if their own people turned and killed them.

“Director Fury is not available, Agent,” she repeated coldly. “He cannot be reached at the moment. If you have something to say—”

“I would like a transfer.”

“Denied.” She was in the game now.

“I would like a leave of absence.”

“On what grounds?”

“Mental health.”

Hill actually laughed. “Denied.”

“Where is Fury?”

“Not available.”

Hill would have been a good agent – had been, in fact, – but she liked control over more than just her own person. When Natasha had first come to SHIELD, Clint had pointed Hill out as someone she would either love or hate. She was gratified not to have fulfilled his expectations.

Hill exhaled sharply through her nose – her version of a sigh. “Agent Romanov, you are required to report all relevant information to your commanding officer.”

“Captain Rogers is not good at holding prisoners, sir.” 

It was an understatement, actually. She didn’t think they had even gotten water yet. They weren’t asking and Steve sometimes forgot that most people weren’t used to the kind of physical hardships that basically everyone he had met so far in the twenty-first century had been put through. 

Unimpressed, Hill deadpanned, “Shocking.”

“Yes, sir.” 

Most people had strong enough animal instincts to look away from Natasha’s gaze. To her credit, Maria Hill never flinched on duty. Natasha had never seen her off duty, but she suspected Hill was equally immovable there.

“Was there something else, Agent?”

“Am I on standby?”

“Your last mission was Houston?” She already knew, but Hill asked and checked her tablet anyway. “Cabin fever already?”

Natasha didn’t answer. Fury prized skills and results; Hill liked protocols and proper documentation. Those were not the hallmarks of a spy and assassin. But then, Hill thought that SHIELD should be more than the euphemism for erasing threats to the so-called global wellbeing.

“We have no need of you at the moment. Standby at Stark Tower until the next assignment. Dismissed.”

Mind racing, Natasha turn on her heel. She hadn’t gone straight to Hill, of course. Fury really was gone, and not just out for a coffee and a quick smoke. She would think the WSC had something to do with it, but if they had been trying to oust Fury, they had been abominably slow about it, which did not quite match up with a snap decision to nuke a city of millions against the recommendation of the field commander. And Fury wouldn’t have left on a whim, not with Cohen and Darwin almost nearly but not quite hardly out of his grasp. 

Hill obviously knew about that; she probably knew as much as Fury, but not quite as much as Coulson had. It had to be absolutely chafing her to a raw stump that Stark had more control over the prisoners than she did, and Hill still hadn’t ordered Natasha to debrief. Unless SHIELD had somehow managed to work around Stark’s frankly incredible firewall or suddenly and entirely trusted Clint with something as important as this, there must be a better game in town.

XXX

The situation was well out of hand. Steve had known that his and the Commandos’ reputations during the war was such that, on the rare occasions that they did take and interrogate prisoners, cooperation came much more quickly than it normally would have done. Even if Darwin and Cohen had been from around here, they would have been too young to be impressed with his service record; Steve had seen the so-called entertainment that people didn’t bat an eyelash at these days.

Even if he had been reluctant to ask for their help – which he wasn’t, not too much – Steve missed having a team. That heady feeling of enhanced awareness during the Battle for New York was as much from the knowledge that there were other fighters depending on Steve to cover their backs as from whatever the serum had done for his senses. It was never as intoxicating in downtime, Steve knew that, but in this century, with this ‘team,’ it had gone completely. Sometimes, Steve wanted to tell the people talking about ‘the Avengers’ that they were just five people who were only still in the same zip code because Fury didn’t want the media to know that they hardly ever spoke to each other anymore.

Steve had hoped that a second crisis might bring them more permanently together, but it hadn’t happened yet. Two kids whose biggest crime so far was identity theft just didn’t have the urgency of an alien invasion. 

Still, he wasn’t going to just give up. He knew that Stark had chafed under his leadership, Romanov and Barton had probably disliked having to report to someone they didn’t know or trust, and Banner had a kneejerk aversion to anyone even vaguely military. Maybe showing willingness to admit that he didn’t know what he was doing and ask for help would endear him to them.

But Tony was gone and JARVIS refused to say where or when he would be back. Natasha had also left the Tower, and JARVIS managed to be even less polite in his refusal to give up her destination. Clint was up on the roof and not doing anything as far as Steve could tell, but he had been plainly hurt that he hadn’t been let in on the plan to keep Cohen out of SHIELD’s hands and Steve didn’t want to appear overly pitying. Bruce was in his apartment and he did not invite Steve inside.

“What do you want, Captain?” He hadn’t even opened the door all the way.

Straightforwardness had seemed to work for Stark, so Steve was blunt. “I don’t know what to do with Cohen and Darwin.”

“Oh, you mean the prisoners?” Bruce hunched his shoulders and crossed his arms in more a satire of a hug than belligerency. “Looking for an insider opinion on their mindset right now? Or the best containment methods?”

 _Then_ Steve gave up.

XXX

Ben really, _really_ hoped they didn’t expect him to consider the drain a toilet. Although, that need fell a distant second to thirst. He hadn’t had a drink since the bar in International Falls and trying to salivate only made his swollen tongue feel tacky.

For the past quarter hour, he’d been standing at and then sitting slumped against the door, knocking sporadically without much hope – there was nobody in the laboratory to hear him. There had been times during the years he had lived in constant fear of the government or something worse coming for him that Ben had fancied he felt alone. Clearly, he hadn’t known the meaning of the word.

If it went on another hour – or what he judged an hour; they had taken everything except his clothes – then he was atomizing the walls and consequences be damned.

Desperate for some acknowledgement of his existence, Ben poked at the biometric scanner. It trilled as it considered his print and then beeped dismissively.

“Unauthorized user,” the British man’s voice said. _Dongsaeng._

Ben clapped his hands over his ears. It was too early for auditory hallucinations, he was pretty sure. But then, he didn’t know how long he had been sedated.

“Okay, you’re fine,” he mumbled to himself, voice hoarse and cracking and strange to his own ears. “Come on, this is—it’ll probably be fine. Totally fine. Steve’s going to come back and he’ll bring water. Right? Yeah, he definitely will.” _–on’t tell them anything._

Hysteria bubbling in his chest, Ben gripped at his hair and pulled. “Fuck! Please come back, Steve, please. _Please_ come back soon.” – _me, dongsaeng!_

Annie’s voice was louder, more insistent.

“Are you well, Ben Cohen?” Somehow, the computer sounded mildly concerned. “Do you require medical attention?” _Kristo, listen to me!_

“Yeah, I’m—I thought I heard—” He frowned. “Who are you?”

“I am JARVIS. I run these facilities. Would you like me to summon Captain Rogers?” _He’s watching. Hide my voice. Keep talking._

They had gotten Annie, too. She had shown him this trick before, but they didn’t use it often because it required so much concentration. If she was in a room like his, though, she wouldn’t have much to divert her attention.

“No, thank you.” It was too obvious that Ben had cottonmouth, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to keep rambling, especially given his previous silence. Annie – if it really was her – seemed to think whoever was watching was doing so closely enough that she had to disguise her waves in others, so Ben wasn’t going to take chances. She would never risk it with someone else in the room with him, so asking for Steve was no use. How to keep JARVIS talking?

“Um, can you—where am I?”

“I cannot give you that information.” _Wait for my instructions._

“Are there things you can tell me?”

“If you ask.”

Maybe that was too short? Ben tried again. “Are there bathrooms?”

JARVIS hesitated. “Captain Rogers has not given you access to the facilities. Shall I tell him you are requesting it?”

Still nothing. Annie must be done talking, or he was paying too much attention for his mind to play tricks now. Slouching lower on the hard, white walls, Ben sighed. “No good.”

He didn’t knock again.

 

 

If his clothes weren’t rustling, there was as good as utter silence. 

 

 

His breathing was like waves, hitching unevenly as his consciousness fell in and out of focus. 

 

 

There was some kind of alarming thrum inside his skull that, after listening to it for quite some time, Ben suddenly understood was his own heartbeat; he had thought it was faraway music that he could hear by straining.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He imagined he could feel the atoms in the wall vibrating against his back. What had been in that peanut butter? Or were they talking to him in a new voice?

Pressing more firmly back against it, his sneaker slid across the floor with a squeak that startled him. Then he was laughing and the noise was oppressive and he couldn’t tell where it was coming from but it felt like maybe it could kill him – unless it was just in his _head_ like JARVIS was, like Annie calling his name ( _Not my name!_ ) (Could _they_ hear? Do they know already?) – but then he could see the sound and maybe he had died or gone insane or—

The wall moved. 

Except it was the door, and Ben fell back onto Steve’s shins.

“Ben, are you alright?” Steve crouched down and grabbed his arms – and he must still be alive because that hurt. Was that good? Not better. 

“JARVIS, what the hell is happening?”

Steve was here – was he here? He would tell Steve anything he wanted to know if he would make his brain stop doing this. Why wouldn’t Annie talk to him again? She could always tell what was real, she could tell him. Steve was so beautiful, why had he done this? Poison, drugs – real, not real? He must not think hard of anything bad or dangerous. Did Steve _know_? ( _Don’t tell!_ )

“He is suffering from dehydration and sensory deprivation, Captain. Surely you expected this?”

“What? Get Banner down here now! Ben, you can—Ben, listen to me. You can stop talking, I’m already here.” Looking horrified, Steve clamped a huge hand – so warm – over Ben’s mouth and that made his thoughts quieter, at least. The counterpoint let Ben feel his cracked lips moving, the hot tears tracked across his cheeks.

“Sh-h, you’re going to be fine, Ben, okay? JARVIS, where is Bruce?”

“Here, here!” Someone new – was he that guest lecturer from UNC Ben saw freshman year? ( _Spies, always spying._ ) – pressed in close over Steve’s shoulder. It was already so bright and he held Ben’s eyes open to blind him with a laser; Steve held him down when he screamed. _Dongsaeng!_

“Can’t you give him something?”

“I am!” He knee was forced down to the floor. The pain in his thigh was a clap of lightning.

Then—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll go through it in order of appearance.
> 
> -Why, yes, Evan is named for and modeled after Chris Evans, who does have some stupid tattoos. I know, sometimes my creativity astounds even me. Writing sex scenes is actually not all that difficult when you've read a bajillion of them. (The more you know.)
> 
> -Natasha was supposed to go talk to Fury but then Hill popped up and I was momentarily astonished and confused before I realized that made perfect sense for the future of the plot. Where is Fury? Tune in ~~next week~~ sometime in the future to find out!
> 
> -Poor Steve.
> 
> -Poor Ben, _bad_ Steve! The torture was accidental; I tried to make that clear throughout. On that note, though, I obviously don't have any personal or professional experience with those sorts of 'enhanced interrogation' techniques. My minimal research says that having white noise muffled for long periods of time really messes with your brain, plus the dehydration, equals Ben delirious.
> 
> I swear that Thor is coming soon, and Loki will at least make a guest appearance at some point (I hope; his fees are super high). Also, the Thing is going to happen really soon. 
> 
> (By 'Thing,' I mean one of the main plot points, not a crossover with the Fantastic Four. I've already got a minor thing with the X-Men; I don't want to make this into a Marvel orgy. I'm sure that fanfiction is out there somewhere and it is probably hot, but it is _not this fic_!)

**Author's Note:**

> That's all for now but I am sort of currently updating as I get chapters finished. It's irregular, but never more than maybe a month between at the most, and usually much less than that. Except it's been on hiatus for a long time while I was working on my Sherlock fic, [Long Term Experiments in Ionic Compounds](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1104294/chapters/2221572), which you can check out if you're into that sort of thing but I would never pressure you one way or the other. 
> 
> In the meantime, thanks for letting me know what you think of The Veil Torn with your kudos, bookmarks, and comments! I appreciate all you lovelies more than I have the emotional maturity to articulate.


End file.
